Dissuasion
by Niente Zero
Summary: Something struck Benton Fraser as odd about the case he and Ray were working on. His suspicions alarmed someone with a lot to hide. How far will the killer go to prevent them from investigating further? Fraser will need all his survival skills. Violence.
1. Beginning with Consequences

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 1 - Beginning with Consequences**

"It's like you're trying to ruin my career."

Benton Fraser walked somewhat unhappily through the dusk-lit streets of Chicago from the 27th District police station to his tenement apartment some twenty blocks away, the words of his unofficial partner Ray Vecchio ringing in his ears.

"I don't know why you can't leave well enough alone. You gotta keep prodding and prodding. We had a clean bust, we had a confession, and you blew it."

Benton sighed. His breath hung frostily in the air in front of him. It hurt him that he'd hurt Ray Vecchio, again. He'd see a flaw in the logic that had lead to an arrest in a case, and tease away at the hole in the fabric until he'd figured out where it was wrong. But he didn't see how Ray could be so upset, because every time, together, they'd find the right answer.

"I don't want your help, not on this case, not any more. Give me a break. We can't always be perfect."

Those had been Ray's words to him as they left Lieutenant Welsh's office, and all Benton had found to say in reply was "As you wish, Ray." It went against every instinct to drop the case and leave Ray to it, but he had confidence that after they'd released a certain John Gantz, who they'd been holding for the murder of a rival gang leader's sister, Gracie De Angelis, Ray would have no problem solving the case on his own. After all, he'd managed perfectly fine for years before Benton arrived.

Gracie De Angelis had been shot execution-style in her kitchen on a Friday afternoon. The immediate suspicion, leveled by her brother, the influential and dangerous Marco De Angelis, was that one of his 'business rivals', Gregory Mack, had ordered the hit as a personal retribution against De Angelis for crossing him in a recent shady business encounter. Not that Marco De Angelis put it in those terms. Mack denied involvement but the gun used was traced to a man known to have worked for him, John Gantz. Ray had brought Gantz in for questioning and the man had broken and made a confession. As far as Ray was concerned it should have been that simple. As far as Benton was concerned, there was a major flaw in Gantz's confession, which he couldn't help but point out.

Benton climbed the stairs of his apartment building, picking up trash on the way to dispose of properly when he reached his small set of rooms. As he reached the top of the stairs, the first warning that something was wrong was the sound of his wolf companion, Diefenbaker, making a frantic attempt to break out of his apartment. Benton paused, wary, and then took a step back, not quite avoiding a heavy blow across the chest from a baseball bat, wielded by a man who had been waiting with his back to the wall, hidden from view.

Benton tumbled down backwards, grasping at the banister in an attempt to slow his fall. He landed as gracefully as possible on the landing, though he was sure he felt his ankle twist under him, and somewhere on the way down a stair had punched him in the nose, which was bleeding profusely. He could hear Diefenbaker's howls of fury, and it occurred to him that it wasn't entirely fair that everyone in the building would do their level best to pretend not to hear or see anything if it weren't they who were at risk. He pulled himself to his feet, ready to tackle the assailant with the baseball bat, but he heard steps behind him climbing the stairs, and turned to find himself facing the business end of a sawn-off shot gun.

"Downstairs. Now." The holder of the shotgun barked. The man with the baseball bat was crowding Fraser, and there was no real option but to go. As they reached the next landing, Fraser grabbed for the stock of the shotgun, pulling it backwards, and snapping the barrel upward to catch the man holding it in the ribcage, winding him. The success of this action was limited by the immediate and violent response of the man with the baseball bat, who swung it in an arc to meet Fraser's shoulder. Jolting pain enveloped Fraser for the vital seconds it took for the man with the gun to be back in control, now leaving nothing to chance by walking Fraser in front of him, the gun pressed unwaveringly against his back. Neither man said anything more. When they reached the ground floor, they hustled Fraser out a back entrance toward a waiting van.

The back door of the van opened, and Fraser was pushed inside. There was a light rigged up, but the windows were covered, and there were no seats. There were, however, two other men. His heart sank. The chance of escape was minimal. One of the men spoke.

"Listen, you should have settled for the arrest you had in the De Angelis case. We ain't gonna put up with you sticking your nose in no more." the man said.

"Not that I expect it to make a difference, but I'm not involved in that investigation any more." Fraser said, trying to conceal any trace of discomfort in his voice and barely managing.

"Yeah, like we would believe that. You too snoopy for your own good, cop." the man said.

"Think what you like, but whatever you do to me, Detective Vecchio will find Miss De Angelis's real killer." Fraser said, discretion not figuring in his current definition of valor.

"Let him try. Think he'll be too distracted tryin' to find your body." The man said. He snapped his fingers, and the man with the baseball bat swung again. Fraser found himself on the floor of the van, tucking his head into his arms and curling up into the smallest target possible for the rain of kicks and blows that came with sickening speed. It was not in him to lie still and take the punishment being dealt out, but any attempt to get to his feet to fight back was met with a cruel and immediate reprisal. Every time a foot caught the same shoulder the bat had hit, Fraser felt a rush of fire that filled his senses. He didn't know if he screamed, he couldn't hear, couldn't see clearly, the world was burning around him. Eventually, the steel toe of a boot caught the base of his skull and, mercifully, his grip on the waking world fell away.

The stars were bright above when the first tendrils of consciousness started to tickle at Benton's mind. His eyes opened and he took in the constellations, feeling detached and uncertain as to the physical reality of everything he was experiencing. So bright. And so foreign. He'd never seen the stars this far south so clearly. When rational thought finally settled in, he realized two things. One, he was in a lot of pain, which he'd rather have continued to be oblivious to, and two, he must be quite far out of the city for the glow of light pollution to have lessened so much. A third thought, or more a realization of sensation came to him. He was very cold. He was, he thought, icy. He moved his head a fraction to look sideways, the throbbing and clanging of warning bells notwithstanding, and found that he was lying on the frozen edge of an inlet, presumably of Lake Michigan. Piecing together the bare facts that he could remember; walking home, the van, he finally reasoned that he must have been dumped from the van and rolled down the bank to the ice.

"Are you planning on staying here?"

Benton blinked, and then sighed.

"Well, Dad, I really hadn't got that far in my thought process." he said, slightly impatiently, not bothering to look around for his father's ghost.

"You should get a move on. If you keep lying here, you'll freeze to death." Bob Fraser's ghost said sternly.

"I had just about reached that conclusion myself, but thank you. Do you have anything useful to add?"

"No. You know you need to find shelter. If you don't get moving then you've as good as let those punks kill you." There was a note of disgust in Bob Fraser's voice.

"Couldn't have that, now could we?" Benton said, attempting to pull himself upright.

"Of course not. I'd be the laughing stock of the afterlife if my son managed to get himself killed so easily."

Benton narrowed his eyes. "Go away, Dad. You're not helping." he said. He couldn't really sit upright. Too many things hurt. But he could roll over, and if he had to crawl on hands and knees for shelter, that's what he'd do. Preferably not while being chastised for not being good enough at staying alive. He already felt idiotic and hopeless without the negative reinforcement that Bob Fraser was there to provide.

He tried to move forward, tentatively putting weight on his left arm. Immediately he knew that the baseball bat had done him no favors at all - the pain that shot through his shoulder made him cry out, a short, guttural yelp from deep in his throat that he bit off tightly, rolling back down onto his back. He lay there for a few minutes. His ribs were not being shy about expressing their distress about their own meeting with the bat, and he took quick, shallow breaths. The last thing he needed was a punctured lung. When the first flare of pain had subsided, he carefully undid the buttons on his jacket with his right hand and, biting his lip, slowly withdrew his left hand from the sleeve, sweat beading on his forehead. He tucked the arm against his chest and, fumbling with each button, did the jacket back up. It was no kind of sling but it would have to do. After that was achieved, he allowed himself two more minutes of lying flat on the ice. The cold deadened the sensation, not much, but enough to make it tempting to stay there until he felt nothing more. But that, he knew, would be the coward's way out. While there was breath in his body, he had to fight to live.

**Author's Note: I was trying to get ready for NaNoWriMo and this story wouldn't leave me alone, so hopefully I'll have all the writing wrapped up on it by Wednesday (I am up to the last chapter!) and can treat myself to revising and posting during November as a reward for meeting my wordcount on the NaNo project. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy the story, it's got your angst, your action, and a bit of a mystery! Oh yes, reviews are wonderful and make me ever so happy.**


	2. Hunting

**Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.**

Chapter 2 - Hunting

Diefenbaker had finally given up on the door and gone through the closed window when he'd heard the sound of the van starting. His dense fur had protected him from most of the broken glass, but still he'd gathered several deep scratches. That didn't concern him; what concerned him was tracking the vehicle which he knew his human packmate was trapped in. City hunting was far more difficult than tracking across the tundra, but he still had a wolf's nose and a wolf's instinct. The softness of city living seemed to drop from him as he ran through the streets, dodging traffic and outraged pedestrians. A few times he lost track of the van and had to search to pick up the trail again, but once it left the city it was easy to follow. But he couldn't run forever, certainly not at the speeds he'd set out at, and it was at a dejected lope that he traveled the miles across the countryside.

The time spent regathering his strength gave Benton the opportunity to inventory the rest of his physical condition. His nose might be broken, but he thought probably only bruised. He could still breathe through it, which was something to be thankful for. As for the state of his head, well, he'd been unconscious, so tally another concussion, which was not such good news, but at least he didn't feel particularly disoriented at this moment. The shoreline was obvious, and not far, and there were clear patches of deep shadow that suggested low bushes and small trees, perfect for building enough shelter to get through the night. It would just take time to reach it, and there was nothing he could do about that.

If there was anything else seriously damaged by the vicious attack, that was one more thing that was out of his hands. The only thing still in his hands was the choice to act, to move even though it would be much easier to let it all go. Even that, he reflected with perhaps a shade of resignation, was not really a choice. He felt so weak, but it didn't matter. It would never matter how he felt. To go on against the odds, that was ingrained in him. Might as well ask him to choose not to breathe. He cleared his mind and concentrated on the distant beauty of the stars for a moment before he rolled back to his knees and began the excruciating shuffle toward the shore.

Ray calmed down almost immediately after losing his temper at Fraser. Sure, if they'd got the wrong guy, then of course Fraser couldn't just ignore that, even though it drove Ray crazy the way he'd undo hours of police work with a single astute observation. In this case, Fraser had startled everyone during the interrogation by asking Gantz what Gracie had been cooking when he killed her. Gantz had shrugged and claimed not to remember, then when pressed he'd said she was making pasta and red gravy. It was damning - he couldn't have been in the kitchen where the murder had taken place, because, as it was a Friday, Gracie De Angelis had been preparing fish, and had several salt-cod soaking on the counter, the pungent smell unmissable to anyone who'd been present. The confession was obviously falsified for some reason known only, at present, to the man who he'd just had to release from custody.

Ray drove around for a while before deciding to just suck it up and go apologize to Fraser. As he went up the stairs, he saw a trail of dried blood leading down. He was jolted to attention. He took the steps up two at a time, calling out "Benny!" as he went. Reaching Fraser's floor and seeing that the trail of blood started on the landing down from it, he pulled his gun out and headed for Fraser's apartment. There was a wedge of newspaper rolled up and jammed under the door keeping it closed. When there was no response to his knock, Ray yanked out the newspaper and opened the door up and went in. He saw the broken window, and no Fraser or Diefenbaker.

Ray called in to the station. His voice was frantic with anxiety.

"Listen, we have a situation here." He conveyed all the information he had to dispatch, and then went to sit helplessly on the stairs. "Benny. Shit. Please be okay. We're going to find you. I swear, I'm going to find you." The possibility that the argument, or rather, his yelling and Fraser taking it in a subdued fashion, was the last time he'd see his friend alive, made Ray's stomach twist up with guilt and fear.

Benton had done his best to create shelter with the current drastic limitations on his mobility. He was off the harsh ice and onto ground that, while cold, was not literally freezing. He had balanced a triangular frame of longer fallen branches braced against each other, and with slow deliberation, over the course of perhaps an hour, woven smaller branches between the larger ones to block the wind blowing across the ice. He still had his coat and gloves on, and long underwear of course, which was a blessing, although he'd lost his hat in the altercation. That bothered him, because he'd lose heat fast from his head, but also because, damn it, that was his hat.

When Benton had secured as much shelter as he could, he curled up under the impromptu hut which was just big enough to hold him. He found himself reverting to the protective position he'd adopted in the van, lying on one side with his knees pulled up to his chest, head tucked down. Even though there was no one around, he didn't feel safe, knowing that he couldn't defend himself. It wasn't a feeling he was used to, and he didn't like it at all. He knew rationally there was no reason for the men in the van to come back for him, god knows they probably assumed he was dead. If he hadn't stirred to consciousness and moved off the ice he would have been by now. But knowing that wasn't helping - deep instincts of self-preservation had his senses on high alert against terrors he couldn't possibly do anything about if they did descend on him.

"Well, it's not the best shelter I've seen, but it's better than nothing."

Benton sighed, not opening his eyes. "Is this really necessary?" he asked.

"Thought you might like the company, that's all." Bob Fraser said. "Otherwise you'll do nothing but lie here feeling sorry for yourself."

"Perhaps it's the concussion, but you seem to be going out of your way to be even more obnoxious than usual tonight." Benton said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache wasn't getting any better.

"Listen, son, it's not your time, and I'm here to make sure you don't do anything stupid, like give up." Bob Fraser grunted.

"I didn't give up, did I?" Benton said. "If I'd given up I'd still be out on that ice." He pulled his knees in closer. He was so very tired. "Just let me be, Dad." The cold of the ground was beginning to seep through his clothes, robbing him of his dwindling reserves of stamina. If he just closed his eyes and waited, maybe help would come some time, or he would never know that it hadn't. Either option sounded equally desirable. Semi-formed thoughts of this nature drifted through his mind.

"Why don't you make a fire?" Bob Fraser said in a cajoling tone. "I can hear it in your voice, you're ready to let the cold win. Think of the nice, warm flames, son. Wouldn't that be more pleasant than lying here in the dark?"

A fire sounded very appealing to Benton, even though it meant more movement. In spite of how much he hated hearing it from his father, despair was a real concern, and there was something cheering in the crackle of flames that could keep a man from giving in to the pain and drifting away when he needed to fight back and find his way out of the trouble he was in. Benton had to admit to himself that he was in pretty deep trouble right now. He had no idea how far he was from the road, but he suspected he was too far to be seen by passing traffic.

With the dry brush and fallen branches lying around, starting a fire should have been the work of a few minutes. Finding the rocks to build a safe fire circle and piling the leaves, twigs and branches up properly took another hour, instead. Even without anyone to hear, Benton was too proud to allow himself to vocalize the agony that accompanied every movement. But it was, at least, a task he could focus on, rather than facing the long, silent, solitary night with nothing to distract him. When he had the fire blazing well away from his flammable shelter he concluded that the warmth and light it provided were worth the bone-weariness that he now felt. If it weren't for the concussion he would have allowed himself to sleep. Instead he sat and stared at the dancing pictures in the flames.

Diefenbaker picked up a stronger scent of his human companion after several long hours. The moon was high in the sky and all was bright and calm. He knew that this must be where the other humans had dumped his packmate from the van, and he was relieved to have an easier trail to follow. He found a second wind and ran again, a sense of urgency to his smooth, flowing motion as he followed the shore of the lake. The smell of the dying fire came to him now, and he barked triumphantly.

Diefenbaker's barking roused Fraser from an unpleasant reverie. He was cold, tired, hungry and thirsty, and still refusing to examine minutely the various sources of pain assailing him. He lifted his head, a spark of hope deep in his eyes. "Dief?" he said. The word came out more plaintively than he'd expected. The wolf slowed his approach, skidding down the bank with joyous barks. He wasn't happy about the state he found his packmate in, but the man was alive, and the rest could be managed. Fraser pulled himself up onto his knees, bracing himself for the shaggy onslaught. Diefenbaker was strangely careful, coming close but not throwing himself against Fraser, just gently butting him with his head and licking his hand.

"You came." Benton's voice sounded ludicrously weak. He wondered, once again, if there wasn't more damage under the deep bruising that covered his chest and back. He couldn't think about it now. Moving in the dark was too dangerous. He just had to hold on until morning. Diefenbaker let out a small, whining bark. Of _course_ he'd found his human. He gently nosed Benton back down into a sitting position in the small shelter, and then squeezed in next to him, resting his head on Benton's lap.

Ray wasn't getting far. The first sweep by uniformed officers of Fraser's building and the area around it had turned up nothing useful, no signs of a struggle past the stairs. They had found his hat where it lay at the bottom of the stairs, having tumbled over the railings during his short fall. Ray held onto it like a talisman. He couldn't imagine his partner going anywhere without a struggle, which meant inevitably that the man was hurt. Ray joined the uniformed officers questioning all of Fraser's neighbors to find out what they'd seen and heard.

Quizzing the man who lived closest to the stairs, Ray found himself perilously close to losing his temper. "What do you mean, you didn't hear anything? How could you not hear anything? There's blood all over the stairs, there's a broken window, and a door covered in scratch marks. You must have heard something!" He banged his fist against the door frame. The man stepped back, still shaking his head and insisting he hadn't noticed anything. Ray took a deep breath prefatory to a good long diatribe, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"Detective?" A uniformed policewoman said. The resident took the opportunity to slam and lock his door.

"What?" Ray said impatiently.

"We got some kids downstairs who saw something." the policewoman said. Ray ran his hand over his head. "Finally. Someone who isn't deaf and blind." He ran down the stairs to the ground floor where two boys of about ten and twelve were standing talking to a policeman.

"So, what'd you see?" Ray said without any preliminary courtesies.

The older boy spoke.

"We was scared. We was just playing outside when this van pulls in and these guys get out, one of them had a, um, baseball bat, and the other one, he had a gun."

The smaller boy nodded, corroborating this.

"We didn't want them to know we seen them, so we hid behind the dumpsters." the older boy said. "We was supposed to be coming in for dinner but they was there for a while. Then they come out with some other guy, and they put him in the van." He went silent, and the younger boy chimed in.

"I think they was hurting him. The van was shaking for a while and, um, there was some yellin', sounded kind of bad, then the two guys got out of the back and I heard one of 'em say 'that'll keep him off our back.' and I guess uh, the other guy, he said something too about keeping some other guy off their backs too."

The older boy nodded. "Then they drove off and we was late for dinner."

Ray's upper lip curled into a silent snarl. These boys were his only witnesses so it wouldn't help to go ballistic on them. He wanted badly to ask why they thought it was a good idea to watch someone be abducted at gunpoint and not call the police, but he knew the neighborhood. Benny sure had picked a nice kind of place to live. God, let him just be alive, and Ray would buy every home security device possible for his friend. Let him just be alive.

The uniformed police officer was questioning the boys closely about the van, getting as many details as possible. He called it in, and the news soon came back that it matched one that had been reported as stolen earlier that night, which meant that they had a plate. It was a slim lead, but Ray clung to it as the only hope to find his partner.

**Author's Note: Read, review, let me know what you think:) Thanks to Queen of Cliffies** **for the encouragement to continue with this story!**


	3. Get Me Through the Night

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 3 - Get Me Through the Night**

"What's your plan, son?"

Benton opened his eyes. He mustn't fall asleep, he remembered that, though he couldn't swear he'd been awake the whole time. Plan. What was his plan? He thought for a long moment before he remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. The pain was distracting.

"I plan on staying put until it's light enough to move safely, and then heading up the shore." he said, his voice wavering. "There must be a road up there, because they wouldn't have bothered to go off-road to dump me."

Bob Fraser sat on the other side of the glowing embers that were all that remained of the fire Benton had built. The bright moon lit his solid looking, but ghostly, countenance. "Not much of a plan, but I suppose it'll do. You can't count on the yank finding you."

"Now, why would you say that?" Benton said. "I'm sure he's looking." He wasn't sure at all, but he didn't feel like letting his Dad slam his friend without any opposition. If, by any miracle, someone had taken the trouble to alert the police to a disturbance, his building wasn't even in Ray's district, so there was no reason Ray would have been notified. Secretly he pictured Ray soundly asleep in his own home. But he admitted none of that. "Of course he's looking for me." He knew it sounded defensive, but he didn't care. "That's what friends do, Dad. Look out for each other."

"Oh, and how did you end up in this mess, then?" Bob Fraser retorted. "If the yank hadn't made a hash of the case in the first place then you wouldn't have got yourself-"

Benton's head snapped up. "Enough, Dad. Enough. I can't-"

Diefenbaker lifted his head from Fraser's lap to glare at the ghost, showing his teeth. He could feel his human's heart rate going up, his shallow breathing becoming irregular and rapid, and he knew Fraser did not need the agitation. Sometimes the two-legged ones behaved so irrationally. Diefenbaker was far from home, or he would have called down some of his own spirit ancestors to give the elder Fraser a stiff talking to, dead or not. Benton might think he was the alpha around here, but Diefenbaker had his own ways of taking charge.

"Fine. Fine. Ignore your father's advice." Bob Fraser said. "Just don't let yourself drift off before the light comes. I'll be back to see that you don't."

The first good news Ray had all night was when the van that Fraser's abductors had used was found abandoned in a distant suburb. He had been pacing the floor of the police station for hours by then, unable to clear his mind of an image of Benton lying beaten on the dirty floor of that van. He knew Benton must be badly hurt, or dead, to have gone this long without managing to make some kind of contact. When the call came in about the van, he raced out to his Buick, and putting the flashing light on the dash, hit the gas and headed for where it had been found. The local police there had been alerted and were combing the nearby streets for any sign of the injured mountie. Even though he wasn't technically a Chicago police officer, they were treating the search with all the seriousness they'd have given any brother officer.

"You should rebuild that fire." Bob Fraser's voice nagged. This time, as he started awake, Fraser knew he had been close to drifting off to the comfort of a deep sleep that could be his last. Fraser looked at his watch. A few hours had passed since Diefenbaker found him, and it was now a little past two in the morning. The night had become colder, but the wolf was doing a good job of keeping him cozy in the tight space of the shelter. If he'd wanted the fire to live, he should have been tending it. In all his years in the wild it was the first time he'd let a fire die unwillingly, but he just couldn't face another slow hour gathering wood.

"Sorry Dad." the words came out softly. "I can't. Not this time. Don't worry. I haven't given up."

"Lucky the wolf has more common sense than you." Bob Fraser grumbled.

"I don't feel lucky right now." Benton said under his breath. Diefenbaker licked his hand. He'd been with his human in bad situations before, and he knew the man was strong, but Diefenbaker could hear a worrying level of strain in his tone of voice.

"We need a better plan to keep you awake until sunrise." Bob Fraser said, ignoring what passed for an emotional outcry from his son.

"You're right." Benton said. "Campfire songs? Ghost stories? You must have a few of those." He laughed, and then clutched at his ribs. Bad idea. Anyway, it wasn't that funny. That was the concussion talking, he guessed. Still, levity even of a loopy variety was far preferable to gloom.

"Since you mention it, there are some funny things about being dead... Now, back in seventy-four, I was in a snow storm with old Joe Haskins..." Bob Fraser launched into a long, digressive story, which at least had the benefit of occasionally being startlingly implausible enough to keep Benton from losing focus entirely. Every time his eyes closed for too long, Diefenbaker would rouse him with a gentle nip.

Ray was given space at a desk and a phone to use at the police station close to where the van had been found. As much as he wanted to stay out on the streets where he'd been searching with the local officers for hours, he had a call to make, one he knew he should have made much earlier. The fact was, he was scared. When he made that call, all of this would be inescapably real and concrete, more than the nightmare it was already. He'd been hoping against hope that even in the dark of the night they'd turn up some further clue than the van as to the location of his missing friend.

The phone rang a long time before the line was answered. It had taken some serious digging to find Inspector Meg Thatcher's private line, but Ray couldn't face calling the consulate, speaking to whoever might be on duty there, and waiting for her to call him back. The current news was too grim.

"Inspector Thatcher?" he said, when she finally answered with a sleepy "Hello?", "This is Ray Vecchio."

"Detective Vecchio. Do you know what time this is?" she said.

"All too well." He swallowed. No point dragging this out. "Benny. Fraser, he's, ah, he's missing. He's been abducted."

There was an intake of breath and then silence on the line for a long moment. "What...? No, wait. Where are you? I'll be right there."

Ray told her what suburb he was in. "Come right along to the police station. I'd rather be out searching, but they have all available officers out. I'll wait here for you."

The long winter night finally began to lift. Rays of light started to glitter over the ice on the lake. Fraser rubbed his eyes. Morning was coming and he must find a way to get himself somewhere that someone might actually find him.

"Well, Dief, do you think we can do this?" he asked, not quite rhetorically. Diefenbaker barked and nuzzled encouragingly. More than thinking that they could do it, the wolf knew there was no alternative. Not one that bore thinking on. Fraser roused his stiff body to move, finding every searing pain re-awakened from its dulled state by his attempts. He held his hand to his mouth, biting on the fleshy base of the thumb, low moans still managing to escape. Diefenbaker whined in sympathy but nudged him to continue moving. Upright was still simply not an option, so Fraser faced the long crawl, bracing himself for each short, painful move forward. Diefenbaker scouted ahead, finding the path clearest of rocks and sharp branches. Half way up from the small shelter to the road, Fraser found he could move no further. It wasn't from want of trying, it was just that every tiny motion was bought with a huge price. He slumped flat on the ground. Diefenbaker barked sharply, but it was no use. Fraser turned his head and said "Dief. Go on. Get help. Can't."

The wolf was reluctant to leave, but he could see that his human had reached the absolute limit of his fairly impressive endurance. With one last worried lick of Fraser's face, Diefenbaker ran off to find help.

Bob Fraser was lost for words. There was no amount of firmly wielded advice that could get someone in his son's physical state moving again. He knew it wasn't his son's time to join him in the afterlife, but he couldn't help but fret. Maybe there'd been a mistake. Maybe he should have nagged him to move last night instead of staying put.

Diefenbaker found the main road again and followed it to a street that turned off into a sleepy suburb. He spotted a black and white patrol car almost immediately, and ran over, barking at the door.

The patrolman inside looked down in surprise. They had been scouring the streets for hours, and he was taking a quiet nap in his car. He picked up his radio. "Did you guys say something about a wolf? I got a wolf here." he said.

Ray was on his fourteenth cup of coffee of the night, sitting with Inspector Thatcher and the dispatcher at the suburban police station when the message came in. "Diefenbaker!" he said, sitting up straighter and rubbing at his bleary eyes. "Yeah, if the wolf's there, Constable Fraser should be close."

The dispatcher spoke, calling all the searchers to head over to the street the patrol car was on.

"Better get an ambulance there too." Ray said, before running out to the Rivera. Thatcher was right behind him, her face drawn and white with the strain of waiting for news, her dark hair hanging limply from the way she'd been running her fingers through it and twisting it up in increasingly anxious fidgeting.

The patrolman got out of his car, regarding Diefenbaker nervously. Diefenbaker barked once and then ran off in the direction of Fraser's resting place. He danced impatiently as the patrol man walked slowly after him, talking into his radio. Diefenbaker led the man down to the main road and across it to the shore of the lake.

"I found him." the patrolman reported into his radio, as he scrambled down the bank. "He's not moving."

Ray stopped breathing for a long moment, his foot crushing the gas pedal, and only started again when the voice coming through the radio announced "Got a pulse. That's about all. Is that ambulance on the way?"

Ray swerved his car hard to park it on the main road alongside the lake shore. The ambulance wasn't there yet, but several other patrol cars had arrived. He found a small cluster of uniformed officers gathered around Fraser. Meg Thatcher stood at the top of the bank. She wanted to be the one to run to Fraser, but she couldn't. She was petrified of what she would find, of seeing him die in front of her. She clutched her arms tightly around her chest and closed her eyes, lips moving in something like a frantic prayer.

"Oh god, Benny." Ray said under his breath. Diefenbaker ran over to him, giving him a look that expressed that he very much expected Ray to fix the situation, and soon. Ray knelt beside his friend. There was nothing he could do right now but be there. It sickened him to see the bruises across Fraser's face and know that the rest of his body was probably equally battered. He subconsciously mimicked one of his mother's favorite gestures from his childhood, licking his thumb and using it to gently wipe some of the dried blood from around Fraser's mouth. Fraser's eyes opened at this touch.

"Ray." he said, eyes lighting up with recognition. "Sorry. Caused trouble."

Ray squeezed his eyes shut, tears pricking the corners of them. "Naw." he said. "You didn't. You didn't do this."

Fraser mumbled, "De Angelis. They want you off the case." He felt that was the really important information to convey. It was urgent that Ray know that he might be in danger too.

"Okay, Benny. Don't worry about that right now. Just hold on. The ambulance should be right here." Ray said, in tones meant as much to reassure himself as the man lying in front of him.

**Author's Notes: Benton's safe and sound now, but there's plenty more action and mystery to come! Stay tuned for chapter 4. Thanks for reading! And thank you to the kind reviewers. Feedback helps the insecure author ;)**


	4. If I Hadn't

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 4 - If I Hadn't...**

When the ambulance came, Ray had to put Diefenbaker in the Rivera and drive behind it, because the wolf became extremely agitated at Benton being removed from his sight. The EMTs worked quickly and efficiently, but the expressions on their faces suggested to Ray that Benton had a steep road to recovery ahead. Inspector Thatcher insisted on riding in the back of the ambulance to watch over Benton.

Arriving at the hospital, Ray found himself reasoning with the wolf. "Look, you're going to have to wait outside, but I promise, I will tell you everything that's going on."

The wolf didn't look happy, but he did sink down to lie out of the way in the ambulance bay, where he was soon being fussed over and treated to snacks by the on-call EMTs.

Ray called Lieutenant Welsh to let him know that Fraser had been found, and what hospital they were at. Meg Thatcher handed him a cup of coffee from a vending machine when he got off the phone.

"Thanks." he said.

Her eyes were dark in her pale face. "You're welcome. Oh, god." Meg made a sound somewhere between a cough and a gasp. "Oh, god, Vecchio, they beat him." The fragile composure that she had maintained while they waited together for news, or for dawn to bring better odds of finding Fraser, broke entirely now, and she held her hand to her mouth in horror. Ray spent a second in an awkward, stiff stance before he made up his mind what to do. He had a professional, sometimes adversarial, relationship with Thatcher, but she needed more than that at this moment. He took her coffee from her hand, and set both cups down on the arm of a chair before pulling her into a tight hug while she trembled violently against him. It was the least he could do to assuage his guilt that she'd been the one who had to see how badly hurt Benton was in the ambulance. He could comprehend the terror and sorrow that he saw in her eyes, but in his eyes there was nothing but intense, burning fury. Someone was going to pay. They broke apart and Thatcher turned away and wiped her eyes, plastering a steely, emotionless expression back on her face.

Lieutenant Welsh joined Thatcher and Ray in the waiting room of the emergency area. After Ray tersely answered Welsh's questions with the small amount he knew about what had happened, the wait was largely silent. Ray had a crashing headache from being up for over twenty-four hours without sleep, coffee or no coffee. Still, he went out to the ambulance bay several times to reassure Diefenbaker that he hadn't been forgotten. It was after ten a.m. when a doctor finally emerged.

"Family of ..." he looked at his chart. "Benton? Fraser." The doctor, a middle aged man with a kind face, looked around. Inspector Thatcher stood up. "Benton Fraser doesn't have any immediate family. I'm his superior officer."

The doctor looked thoughtful, then nodded. "All right. If you'd like to come and sit down in a more private area, I can tell you what's going on with Mr. Fraser."

Thatcher looked over her shoulder at Ray and Welsh, managing a watery smile. Ray swallowed. He desperately wanted to be a part of that conversation. He found himself gripping his polystyrene cup of cold coffee so tightly that the bottom split and coffee dregs trickled down his arm.

Eventually Thatcher emerged. It was hard to read her expression. She came over and sat down again. "Well, it's mostly good news." she said. "Not great news, but it could be a lot worse."

Ray watched her expression closely. There was a tightness to the muscles around her jaw that suggested she was holding back tears. That was hard to reconcile with good news.

"He's going to need to be under observation for a few days. There were several cracked ribs, and they're monitoring his heart and lung function. It looks like he was hit across the chest with a blunt instrument of some sort. They x-rayed his chest and abdomen and although he has a considerable amount of swelling and bruising, apparently he's made of tough stuff." A sob caught in her throat, and Welsh rubbed her shoulder sympathetically before she continued.

"They expected to see more internal injuries, which would have required surgery, but so far they think there's only minor damage to his kidneys. It should heal without intervention. They'll be taking him for an ultrasound and monitoring certain factors in his blood. I'm not a medical person. I didn't understand it all. But I gather they think he had a miraculous escape on that front. They put him on intravenous antibiotics in case anything turns up. If anything had hemorrhaged- he'd have bled to death on the ice." Thatcher struggled to maintain a decent amount of reserve, her lips trembling, "I- we almost lost him."

Ray's grip on the demolished cup tightened. It was a laundry-list. He thought of the small boys who'd seen Fraser being led out by the man with the gun and the man with the baseball bat. A blunt instrument. He couldn't help picturing the baseball bat crashing into Fraser's ribs. It was too much, just too much to be borne.

"They will have to operate once he's stabilized." Thatcher continued. "His shoulder blade was shattered. He'll need metal plates and pins to hold it together."

Ray sucked in air audibly. He'd not missed the signs on the hillside that Fraser had hauled himself up from the ice to near the road. All that with a broken shoulder?

"They're waiting until they've observed him for the chest injury and," she closed her eyes and shook her head sadly, "concussion, of course. In the mean time, they've got him under rather heavy pain medication. We'll be allowed to see him after the ultrasound. He's also suffering from exhaustion, so we're not to expect too much coherence."

Ray put his head in his hands. This was supposed to keep him off the De Angelis case? It just reinforced his determination to get to the bottom of it. Worse, he had to presume that the attack was intended to be fatal, as most men would not have pulled themselves off that ice and survived the cold of the night. Then again, most men would not have been hunted down by a wolf determined to save their life.

Benton's return to consciousness this time was not accompanied by the beauty of the night sky, but it was also much, much less uncomfortable than the night before, although he registered that significant parts of his body still had complaints. He had been awake but disoriented throughout his admission to hospital, the x-rays, blood draws, and ultrasounds, but as soon as he was transferred to a bed rather than being moved about all over the hospital, he'd drifted off into the deep sleep he'd resisted all night. It was the presence of a stranger in his hospital room that woke him, his sharp senses still registering alarm at any possible threat.

Benton was relieved to see that the stranger was a nurse who was standing at the foot of his bed dressed in scrubs. He had a chart in his hand, and he was making notes on it. He looked up at Benton, a smile gracing a pleasantly freckled face. "Good afternoon, Mr. Fraser. I'm Daniel, I'm one of your nursing staff." he said, walking around to Benton's bed side and adjusting a plastic box on an IV pole. "Doctor will be along shortly to talk to you about your injuries. In the mean time, I'd like to make sure you're comfortable. We've set you up with a morphine drip. You can activate the pump by pressing the button located right here by your hand." he held up a small plastic switch attached to a cord that ran to the box. "The pump is set up to allow a dose once every fifteen minutes. But to help us manage your pain, I need to ask you to tell me, on a scale of one to ten, how much pain you're in right now. One is no pain at all, and ten is the worst pain you can imagine."

Benton thought carefully. What a strange question. He could imagine any number of things that might be much more painful than his current state of disrepair. He'd heard childbirth was appallingly painful, and passing kidney stones nearly as much so. He imagined thawing out after losing a substantial amount of circulation to frostbite must be awful. He didn't want to be dramatic. Eventually he settled on three. It seemed reasonable. He tried it on Daniel. "Three."

Daniel stepped back, mouth hanging open. "No way. Three? Mr. Fraser, you have a broken shoulder bone, several cracked ribs, concussion, and severe contusions over the entirety of your torso."

Benton attempted to shrug and hissed with sharp discomfort. "If ten is the worst pain that I can imagine, well, I once knew a man, a hunter, and one autumn while he was out hunting caribou to feed his family over the winter, he got caught in a rock slide. Unable to free his arm from the pile of rocks that had fallen on him, and knowing that if he stayed put and waited for rescue he would probably die of exposure, he cut his own arm off with his hunting knife. I can only imagine that was remarkably unpleasant comparative to my own present condition. Maybe I should have said two."

Daniel scratched his head. He was a bright young man, and he followed Benton's logic, for all that it was presented in an unusual fashion. "Um. I guess the question is on the ambiguous side. Maybe I could restate it? What about with one being no pain, and ten being the most pain you've actually experienced?"

Benton looked thoughtful. "In that case," he said, "I should have to say six." The earlier bolus of morphine he'd been given in the emergency room was still dulling some of the pain.

Daniel wrote this number down. A sudden flash of pity passed across his face. The patient in the bed had been so literal about the whole question that it left Daniel with no doubt that if he said six now, that meant that he had experienced far worse suffering in the past. Daniel didn't let the expression linger on his face as he looked up from Benton's chart. He knew a thing or two about the stoic type. He'd bet good money that underneath the bruising was a will of iron.

"Great. Well, not great." Daniel said. "We want to get your pain down to a two at most. I'd like you to try clicking the morphine drip now."

Benton obediently pressed the button. He didn't care for the state of confusion that came with being medicated, but truly, this didn't feel like something he could just tough out, no matter how much he wanted to.

"Okay, that should take effect soon." Daniel said. "I'll be back in a little while to check how you're doing. I'll let doctor know you're awake. And if you're up to it, you have some visitors who'd like to see you."

Benton inclined his head in a small nod. "I'd like that." He remembered that Ray had been with him before the ambulance came, and as little as he could remember the ambulance ride, it seemed to him that Inspector Thatcher might have been hovering behind the EMTs.

Ray, Thatcher and Welsh filed into the room.

"Ray, you look terrible." Benton said. "You look like you didn't get any sleep."

Ray snorted. "I look terrible? What about you? Anyway, you think I was going to sleep with you missing out there somewhere?"

Thatcher cleared her throat. "I slept, but I didn't know, I mean, Detective Vecchio didn't call me until early this morning."

Benton turned his gaze to her. The expression in his eyes softened. "I'm glad, Sir." he said. "I'd hate to think of you being unnecessarily worried on my account."

"I hardly think it would be unnecessary." she said abruptly. "Look at you. My god."

She let Welsh steady her again with a hand on her shoulder.

Ray stepped forward, holding Fraser's hat in his hands. "We found this at your building. I thought you'd want it."

Fraser summoned a wan smile. "My hat. Thank you, Ray. I was worried."

Ray put it on the bedside table.

"Dief's going crazy." he said. "I don't think he believes you're all right, but I haven't figured out how to sneak him in yet." He looked at his hands. There was a lot more he wanted to say.

Welsh gently tapped Thatcher on the shoulder, and suggested they give Ray and Benton a moment in private. Ray sat down in the chair beside Benton's bed.

"Look, I don't even know how to say this." Ray said. "I was coming over last night to apologize. I shouldn't have blown up at you. If I hadn't, you... they..." he swallowed hard, guilt haunting his eyes.

Benton blinked a couple of times before he could focus as clearly as he'd like on Ray. The morphine was doing a number on him. He spent some time trying to remember how to express what he wanted to say. He felt distant, like his mind was floating off somewhere in a pale blue sky, and it was an inordinate effort to rein it back in so he could make sense. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but it was more than a little inconvenient.

"No, Ray, please." he said eventually, his voice slow and deliberate. "You know that if they really wanted to hurt one of us to get us off the case, they'd have managed somehow. Neither of us operates under the assumption that we need to be on guard twenty-four hours a day. If it wasn't me, it would have been you."

Ray had to concede that this was probably true. In all likelihood the assailants had picked Fraser because he lived alone, which made him an easier target.

"Ray, I can identify the men who attacked me." Benton said. "I don't think they- I'm sure they didn't mean for me to live."

Ray shuddered. "Benny..." he said.

"They wanted you distracted. Off the case. Please, Ray. Bring photo identification books. We've got to find out who was responsible for Gracie De Angelis's death." Anyone but Ray would have been unable to read the urgency in the sedated man's quiet plea, but Ray didn't miss much in Benton's expression. Ray nodded, his mouth twisted into a scowl. More importantly, he'd find out who was responsible for hurting his friend. Then just let anyone try to stop him from taking retribution.

"Okay, Benny. I'll be back tomorrow with the mugbooks, but you gotta rest until then."

Benton wanted to protest, but instead he found himself giggling. "Mugbooks. That's a funny word, Ray." he said. He closed his eyes, the warm lull of the drugs and exhaustion overtaking him. Ray watched for a few minutes as the gentle fingers of sleep brushed over Benton's face, erasing the hard lines of strain and caution from around his eyes and mouth.

Meg Thatcher slipped back into the room and she and Ray exchanged a long, eloquent glance.

"Go home and get some sleep, Vecchio." Meg said, "I'll sit by him."

"I don't know that I can sleep much." Ray said. "But you're right. I can't figure this one out on no sleep and pure caffeine. Just promise you'll call if-"

"If anything happens, I'll call. I promise." Meg said as she took up her vigil in the chair by Benton's bedside.

Ray nodded in acknowledgement. Good enough. If he had to leave, at least he was leaving Benton in safe hands.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, a man reading the afternoon edition of the Chicago Tribune stopped suddenly when he came to a small article in the regional section colorfully headlined "Canada Cop Survives Night on Ice", and cursed for a solid minute on the theme of the difficulty of getting good help these days, before reaching for the telephone.

**Author's Notes: Well, that was a kind of schmoopy chapter, but you know, people get upset when their friends get hurt. Thanks for reading and reviewing! It's nice to see that people are enjoying it. I will tuck my insecurities back in the box where they belong!**


	5. Familiar Faces

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 5 - Familiar Faces**

"May I have some water, please?"

Meg Thatcher had been napping beside Benton's bed since shortly after Ray left. She hadn't been up all night, but she'd still had a long and exhausting day. It was evening when Benton woke her with his request.

Meg ran her hand through her hair. "Constable Fraser, you're awake." she said, redundantly. "I'm sorry, they're planning to operate tomorrow morning, you're not allowed to eat or drink." It was a bald little denial and she immediately rushed to add "But if there's anything else I can get you, anything at all..."

Benton nodded. "Ah. Understood. No, there's nothing I need." He was puzzled as to why she was there, but he didn't like to ask.

"Vecchio went home." she said, seeing his baffled expression. "I told him to. I thought I could stay in case you woke up and needed something."

"Oh." The thought of Inspector Thatcher playing nursemaid was somewhat disconcerting. "Well, thank you. I appreciate it." he said.

Actually, the thought of anyone voluntarily sitting with him just in case he needed something was relatively novel. He'd never been sick as a child, and when he'd been injured it was always somehow his own fault and his grandparents certainly hadn't indulged him with any sort of fussing. On reflection, a little fussing was nice. Unnerving, but nice.

Meg looked closely at his face. "You're in pain again." she said in a matter-of-fact tone, a statement, not a question.

"It doesn't really matter." Benton said. But it was true, the morphine from earlier had worn off and it was the pain more than the thirst that had woken him. Meg gave him a mildly exasperated look until he pressed the button for the morphine pump. He was soon asleep.

Benton woke up again twice more while Meg was there, each time quietly asking for water to drink. Meg reminded him about the surgery both times, with more patience than she thought she possessed. When he was restless in his sleep she held his hand and talked softly, mostly about things she missed from home and childhood memories, which seemed to settle him down. She set aside the veneer of duty and formality, of her role as his superior officer, in favor of simple compassion toward him as one person to another. Meg was glad she'd sent Vecchio home so she could be the one to watch over Benton through the night.

It was very late in the evening, more like early the next morning, when Meg was finally ordered home by the nurse manager of the ward, who could turn a blind eye to the violation of the sanctity of visiting hours no longer. "Don't worry. We'll take good care of Mr. Fraser," she told Meg. "He's going to need his friends and family rested and strong to help him while he recovers."

Meg just smiled and nodded. So what if Benton had no immediate family? He had the next best thing, a friend who cared enough to scour Chicago for him, and the solidarity of the law enforcement community, which was family in its own strange way.

When daylight came, Fraser was woken by a familiar wet tongue on his hand. He opened his eyes and looked down beside the bed to see Diefenbaker looking inordinately pleased with himself.

"How did you get in here?" He saw the answer immediately. "Oh." he said. Diefenbaker was sporting an official looking cloth vest covered in logos identifying him as a service dog. "So you're a service wolf now? You do understand that service animals have to obey orders without question, don't you?"

Diefenbaker gave this a dismissive yawn. As if!

"Well, I don't know how you got your paws on those insignia, but you'd better not do anything to disgrace the RCMP while you're wearing them. There are standards, you know!"

Diefenbaker made a smug huffing sound. He'd have taken the scolding more seriously if he hadn't been able to see the smile on Benton's face, his eyes speaking volumes of happiness at Diefenbaker's presence. The human could pretend to be cross all he wanted, but he wasn't up to fooling a wolf.

It wasn't until late in the afternoon that Fraser was able to look through the collection of mugshots. In the morning the surgeon and anesthetist deemed him well enough for surgery on his shoulder, which took more than four hours, and then it took some time for him to shake off the anesthetic. Afterwards his arm was strapped to his chest to prevent movement, and he found that the pain seemed to be greatly reduced now that the surgeon had spent all that time putting things back together in there.

After leaving the hospital the day before, Welsh had grilled Ray on everything that had happened, and had deemed the situation high risk enough that to Ray's relief, there was a uniformed officer from the local PD on the door to Fraser's room, and to his exasperation, a uniformed officer from the 27th district accompanying Ray everywhere in case an attempt was made to dissuade him from continuing to investigate the case. Welsh was throwing other resources at it too, determined that whoever was responsible for the murder of Gracie De Angelis and the attempted murder of Benton Fraser would experience the full weight of the law.

Fraser sat up in the hospital bed, supported on a pile of pillows. His eyes were still ringed by dark bruising, and his nose was still swollen, but he looked alert enough to Ray.

"How're you doing?" Ray asked. He sat down and proffered a bunch of grapes in addition to the photo books.

"Fine, Ray." Fraser said. He would have said that if he was on fire, so Ray relied more on the general lack of tense lines across Fraser's face for reassurance.

Diefenbaker stood up and went to investigate the grapes, turning his head in disgust when he sniffed them. He snuffled Ray's pockets in case there was something better to be had.

"I'm going to have to ask you to take Dief with you when you leave today." Fraser said. "I know he means well, but he's got to learn to follow rules."

"All right, Benny. At least he got to see you. But don't blame Dief for the whole thing. When I tried to get him to leave yesterday, he put on quite the scene, and one of the EMTs took pity on him. You ever notice that he has a way with women? She told me her sister had a guide dog and she'd get the vest thing for him, sneak him in. So I let him stay with her, and I guess she pulled it off!"

"Ah. Well, that was very kind of her, and I was very glad to see him, but I think it would be better if he goes with you. I don't think the nurse manager believes he's a guide dog."

"Happy to have him." Ray said. "We can watch reruns of Lassie and get pizza. Anyway, the case."

"Yes, Ray, what've you found out?"

"We had De Angelis back down the station yesterday to ask some more questions about his sister." Ray said. He looked frustrated. "Nothing useful. Same as before. I guess we'll see about bringing Gantz back in, find out why he lied."

"Well, once we identify the men who attacked me, it should be clear, at least, who wants us off the case, which would logically suggest that that party was responsible for the murder." Fraser said, reaching for the book that lay on the tray hanging over his bed.

"Just take it easy though." Ray said. "We'll look for as long as you've got the energy, but you have to let yourself rest."

"Ray, I've been doing nothing but resting." Fraser said, jaw set stubbornly. "I appreciate everyone's concern, but it's maddening to be stuck here unable to help." He flipped the top book on the pile open and started paging through it. The first book yielded no familiar faces, and Ray took it off the pile and set it on the floor, watching closely to be sure that Fraser wasn't too tired to continue.

The second book proved equally vexing, and nearly an hour had passed since Ray's arrival by the time Fraser was done paging through it. Ray could see his friend slowly turning paler under the dark bruising.

"That's it. We're done." Ray said, sweeping the rest of the books out from under Benton's hand.

Benton protested. "One more, Ray. We don't have much else to go on. I don't want to give them more time to cover their tracks. I am fine, really."

Ray sighed. He wanted to be firm, but he was still feeling guilty for Benton ending up in this mess.

"Okay, Benny. One more." He'd noticed that his partner's hand was hovering near the button for the morphine drip. "One more, provided you press that button now and rest once the morphine kicks in."

Benton ran his tongue over his lower lip. That obvious? Oh well. He pressed the button, feeling psychological relief immediately, even though the physical relief was some minutes away. Ray placed the third book in front of him. Half way through the pages, a look of absolute physical revulsion passed over Benton's face.

"Ray. That one." he said. "He was the one. The one with the bat."

"Okay, good." Ray looked at the picture. "Eric Thomas. We have a name now, somewhere to start."

Benton stared into the distance. Why hadn't he remembered before?

"I need a moment, Ray." Benton said. "I need to think." He closed his eyes. He tried to go back to the scene on the stairs, to remember what he'd seen, heard, felt. He got as far as picturing entering his building and climbing the stairs when a sudden wave of unexpected nausea and dizziness overtook him.

"Benny, you okay?" Benton felt Ray's hand on his arm.

"Apparently not, Ray. There is a physical mechanism by which a person's mind will sometimes prevent them from remembering a traumatic event. I was trying to recall details about the attack, about Thomas, but I don't think that I can." He spoke with his usual calm clarity, but he looked visibly shaken by the experience.

"It's okay." Ray said. "The ID is good enough. Welsh has everyone scrambling on this case, they'll find this Thomas guy. I'll make sure they do. Don't give it another thought."

Ray really meant it, too. No-one should look that shaken up just from trying to remember something, though he'd seen it before in trauma victims. "If and when we need you to be able to remember more, we'll have the department shrink help get you past that block." he said.

"I do not need a psychologist!" Benton said emphatically.

"Sure, Benny. Just promise me you won't sit around and brood about this, okay?" Ray said.

"I don't brood, either!" Benton said with a dark look that belied his words.

"Uh-huh. Sure you don't." Ray smirked. "Just promise, okay?"

"All right Ray. If you insist. But if you go after Thomas, please be careful." Benton said. He pressed his lips together, suppressing frustration that he had to lie uselessly in a hospital bed while his partner did all the work.

"Welsh's got my back. Don't worry. I'll stop by again tomorrow and get you up to speed on what we find out." Ray said. He stopped on his way out of the room to check in with the young officer currently responsible for guarding Fraser's room. He showed her the photograph that Fraser had picked out as one of his assailants, as an added precaution for Fraser's safety.

The day after surgery, Benton was sure he was ready to be discharged from the hospital. At the very least he was sure that his tolerance for being stuck on bed rest with no real way to contribute to the case they were working on had reached its inevitable end. As it happened, his surgeon disagreed.

A petite blonde woman old enough to be Benton's mother, she came by with Daniel in the morning to take a look at how the surgical wound was healing when Daniel changed the dressing. Fraser made his case to her while he was flat on his stomach and she was examining the incision for any signs of redness or swelling.

"I'm perfectly fine now, Ma'am. I'm sure you did a wonderful job, and I'm quite ready to be back on my feet. I understand you are one of the physicians who can sign discharge papers for me, so perhaps as soon as the dressing has been replaced I could be on my way."

The surgeon laughed, a soft, tinkling laugh. Then she spoke in a not-unkind but nonetheless stern tone.

"Mr. Fraser." she said. "It's obvious from your physique that you are a very active person. In my job I see a lot of very active people. Athletes, climbers and so on. You're all _terrible_ patients. If it were just the shoulder, I would say yes, you appear to be healing remarkably well, and you could be discharged to bed rest in your own home. But you have to understand, as much as you feel that you're ready to leap up and take on the world, you had extensive injuries and if you move around too much, you risk slowing your recovery down and creating complications." She was silent a moment as Daniel replaced the dressings on Benton's shoulder. "You forget that I just watched you go through severe discomfort trying to roll over in bed, Mr. Fraser. So I'm going to have to say, no, I can't discharge you, not until I can see that your body has had adequate time to handle the trauma. At the moment, I want you in here for at least two more days."

Benton was too polite to do more than sigh deeply, an action that caused his ribs to protest, only reinforcing the surgeon's point of view. "Understood." he said in a defeated tone. At least he felt more lucid today after two good nights of sleep, and Ray was bringing over the case files so he could review them for anything, anything at all that he might have missed. He was confident this recovery would go faster than the last time he'd been in hospital for a long visit. This time he wasn't fighting depression and guilt. This time he had a case to solve, and a crime against an innocent woman to avenge.

Ray was driving toward the hospital down the interstate with his Welsh-mandated personal protection in tow, a young officer named McNeely, who was full of nervous chatter.

"So, this, this a great car, Detective, I mean, wow, the interiors are so..." He was quickly silenced by a sardonic look from Ray. "Yeah." Ray said. "Mint. Costs a fortune to keep it this way. Don't touch anything." Nevermind that he had a wolf riding around in the back seat. A cranky wolf.

McNeely was holding the pile of folders and papers Fraser had requested, including the file for the man he'd identified the day before, Eric Thomas, with his rap sheet and list of known associates. It wasn't immediately apparent who he was working for, so Ray was glad that he'd have Fraser's eye to look over it all.

Suddenly a big pickup truck veered across into their lane. Ray accelerated out of the way, swearing at what he at first took for careless driving. But then the pickup accelerated, bumping against the rear of the Rivera, jolting Ray. He picked up speed again. "McNeely, get the plates on that guy, he's trying to run us off the road."

McNeely turned around. "No front plate, sir." he said. Ray was looking for an opening in the lane to the left of them. The pickup was crowding him in. "Radio in. Get the highway patrol on them." Ray said tersely. McNeely spoke into the handset, relaying information to the highway patrol about the color and make of the truck, as Ray squeezed the Rivera into a gap that even a smaller car should have left alone, to the chagrin of the driver now behind him in his new lane, who shared her displeasure with a long peal of her horn. The pickup was now beside the Rivera on the right. Ray glanced over. "McNeely, down!" he said, seeing the driver lift a shotgun. He swung the wheel once more, almost scraping the hood of a blue honda civic as he moved into the far left lane, putting a lane of traffic between them and the pickup, and accelerating to the Rivera's top speed for a few hair-raising moments. McNeely was reporting the gun, in a shaky voice, to the highway patrol dispatcher.

The driver of the pickup, having lost the opportunity to take Ray out, soon turned off the interstate. McNeely gave this information to highway patrol too. Ray slammed his fist against the steering wheel. "Someone's playing dirty." he said. "Benny's a sitting duck in the hospital."

"There's a guard on his door, sir." McNeely said.

"I'm going to trust my partner's safety to some cop from the suburbs who I don't even know?" Ray was speeding toward the hospital now. He pulled into the parking lot to see several police cars parked haphazardly in front. Somehow he was sure that whatever trouble there was was related to Fraser.

A quarter of an hour earlier, the policeman on duty outside Fraser's room had proven a certain level of gullibility by responding to a man wearing a white coat asking him to "take a look at this", holding up a chart, the clipboard concealing most of his face. As soon as the policeman got close enough, the man in the white coat had grabbed him and pressed a cloth loaded with chloroform over his face. He dragged the slumped figure into Fraser's room. Fraser looked up from the bed, startled to see the unconscious policeman fall to the floor as the man in the white coat pulled a gun out of his pocket.

Author's Note: Phew, this chapter turned out a lot longer than the first draft because Meg insisted on being a warm-blooded human being, and I wanted to get you to the cliff-hanger. Stay tuned! As always, thanks so much for reading and reviewing :) I think I'd probably write this anyway even if it were into the blank void, but it's much nicer knowing there's an audience.


	6. A Fighting Chance

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 6 - A Fighting Chance**

Fraser recognized the man with the gun as the talkative one from the van. Instinctively, he used the only weapon he had at hand, the IV pole that held the morphine drip, sliding his bare feet onto the floor as he grabbed it and swung it at the man. The alarm on the plastic box containing the bag of morphine was triggered when it pulled loose as Fraser used the pole to keep the man at bay. He heard the shrill beeping and hoped that it would alert a passing nurse or orderly to the fact that there was something very wrong.

Fraser hit the man's shoulder with the top of the pole, a smarting blow that prevented him from firing his silenced weapon. The man crowded him, raising the gun, and Fraser levered the pole down again, forcing the man to duck his head to avoid being hit. Fraser kicked out, his balance unsteady. The man pushed the pole out of the way and barreled forward, shoving the small of Fraser's back against the hospital bed. Fraser struggled to keep the man from pressing his gun against his temple, grasping the man's wrist as firmly as he could.

Fraser was not going to give in easily. He hadn't kept himself alive through that hellish night on the ice only to end up dead in a hospital room. He wasn't above fighting dirty if he had to. He leaned down and bit the hand that held the gun, causing the man to curse, but it wasn't enough to disarm him, and he grabbed Fraser roughly by the hair, yanking his head back.

Fraser found the silencer pressed hard against his chin. He would have been dead if he hadn't clutched the gunman's hand, wrenching back the trigger finger as forcefully as he could. He fought to maintain control. One slip and the man would have his finger on the trigger and that would be the end. With a growl of anger, the man swung the whole gun, striking Fraser across the jaw with it. Still Fraser did not let go of his hold, bending the man's finger back in a way that he knew had to be agonizing.

His other hand still twisted in Fraser's short hair, the man pulled Fraser's head forward and mustered a bruising blow full across Fraser's face with the gun. Fraser's vision blurred, his eyes filling with involuntary tears, the taste of blood strong in his mouth. But he was the next to experience a moment of triumph as he felt the man's finger snap and the man cried out in pain.

Realizing that he couldn't win the fight the way it was going, the man took a step back and pulled Fraser's head down further, doubling Fraser over. He brought his knee up powerfully to meet with Fraser's midsection, eliciting a groan as muscle and cartilage met tender, bruised abdomen. Fraser wasn't sure how much of that punishment he could take. He wished his left arm weren't strapped uselessly to his chest. The scene from the van, lying there unable to protect himself, flashed into his mind and he held back a surge of unreasoned panic, swallowing acid that rose up in his throat.

The door to the room swung open and Daniel appeared pushing a trolley of supplies, a hearty "Okay, how did you manage to set the alarm off-" making it out of his mouth before he took in the odd scene and froze. The gunman turned his head, startled, and Fraser took the opportunity to squeeze his hand in a crushing grip, trying to force him to drop the gun. Daniel wasn't frozen for long. He picked up the nearest object to hand, a bedpan from his trolley, and brought it down across the man's head. It wasn't a strong enough blow to knock him out, but it was enough to give Fraser a chance to push the man off and stand upright. Fraser's slightly less powerful than usual right hook to the man's jaw finished Daniel's work. Fraser promptly collapsed into a sitting position on the bed. His nose was bleeding again, his ribs and stomach were giving him hell, and he knew from past experience that he'd pulled the stitches loose in his shoulder.

"Daniel, please." he said, in a tone of authority that the tremor in his voice didn't undercut. "I need you to restrain that man until the police can arrive. I'm afraid he's dangerous."

Daniel looked undecided as to whether he should tend Fraser, tend to the unconscious policeman on the floor, or follow Fraser's instructions first. He shrugged and hit the call button. "Okay, but you stay put there. In fact, lie down and tilt your head back, would you?" Another nurse came into the room in response to the call button and the chloroformed policeman was quickly placed in medical care.

Fraser lifted himself gingerly into the bed and slumped back onto the pillows, grabbing the edge of the sheet to hold up to his nose. He watched with satisfaction as Daniel secured the gunman's hands behind his back with gauze bandage. The fight, which had seemed an eternity to endure, had in reality been over in little more than a minute.

Daniel stood up from his work. "One to ten?" he asked. Fraser murmured "eight" reluctantly, an open plea in his eyes for Daniel not to make a big deal over it. Daniel's face registered concern. That was the direct opposite of good coming from _this_ patient.

"Okay, sit tight, I'm going to get someone to give you an intramuscular injection of morphine." Daniel said. The IV needle had been ripped right out of the back of Fraser's hand during the fight. Daniel was back soon with Fraser's surgeon's assistant.

By the time Ray arrived, the surgeon's assistant had administered the morphine and cleaned and re-stitched and dressed Fraser's surgical wound, and he was sporting a brand new plaster across the bridge of his nose. Daniel had given Fraser gauze to soak up the nosebleed better than the sheet and a big tumbler of ginger ale to settle his stomach. Fraser was grateful for the nurse's sharp powers of observation.

Ray burst in to Benton's room to find him giving a statement to one of the local police. He waited until Fraser was finished and the policewoman had left before speaking.

"Benny! Thank god you're all right." He touched Benton's shoulder lightly, as if reassuring himself that the mountie was really alive, and for the most part undamaged.

"Thanks to Daniel's quick work with a bedpan." Benton said. "I feel as if I've been put through a wringer."

"Yeah, you look it. Listen, some guy tried to drive us off the road on the way over." Ray said, his tone deceptively casual. What was that compared to a gun in the face?

"Whatever is going on with this case, these people really want us out of the way." Ray continued. "They must be wetting themselves that you're alive and can ID who was in that van, and they must figure you've already given me more information than is safe for them."

Benton looked concerned. "They made an attempt on your life? We need to find out who's behind this before anything bad happens."

Ray groaned. "Before? You ending up flat on your back doesn't count I suppose. Well, anyway, obviously the security here is useless. You can't stay here."

Benton's brow furrowed. "My surgeon refused to sign my release form earlier this morning." he said. "I doubt she'll be any happier about it now."

Ray's phone rang and he walked to the corner of the room to take the call. He came back with a worried look on his face.

"That was Welsh." he said. "Gantz is dead. They found his body in his apartment, looks like he was killed, execution style, right after we released him."

Benton rubbed his forehead. It was the only part of his face that wasn't currently throbbing in a distracting fashion. "If De Angelis's people were under the impression that Gantz killed Gracie De Angelis, it's possible that it was a revenge killing. Or it's possible that the third party that we're looking for had Gantz killed. Either way, all out warfare between the factions seems inevitable. I can't help but wonder if that was the intention all along."

"And I can't help feeling that I put you in the middle of a mob war, Benny. We're up against people who go to violence as the first resort."

He was rewarded with a glance full of dark irony.

"And you, you're not in the middle of it too? I appreciate your concern, Ray, but I think that this has been inevitable since you were assigned to investigate Miss De Angelis's death. As much as I dislike being stuck in a hospital bed, the choice to turn to violence, combined with a certain ineptitude in executing it, has left whoever's behind this with a big problem. I hope that we can stop them before more people are hurt, but every rash action they take just provides us with more evidence leading to them."

Ray started to protest volubly at the idea that something good had come of his partner being abducted and beaten, but Benton interrupted him.

"Think about it, Ray. If we had released Gantz and these people had not responded by kidnapping me, we would have no names, no faces, nothing that we could possibly link to Miss De Angelis's death. We might have spent months trying to find out who was paying Gantz. In reacting hastily, the villain or villains of the piece unwittingly showed their hand."

"Benny, they nearly killed you!" Ray expostulated.

"But they didn't, so we can use their misstep to our advantage." Benton answered calmly.

"I don't know whether you're the most mentally well adjusted person on the planet, or whether I should put that shrink on speed dial!" Ray said.

Benton rolled his eyes. "It could be worse." he said.

"How could it be worse?" Ray asked excitedly.

"We could be up against people who are not only willing to apply deadly force to the situation, but in possession of the wits to apply it strategically instead of in the clumsy fashion they have so far." He added cryptically: "Of course, the lack of planning may be a clue in and of itself."

The door to Fraser's room opened again and the slight figure of his surgeon popped into view.

"I heard there was a disturbance down here." she said in a scolding tone.

Ray turned to her with a scowl. "My partner was attacked. I'd say there was a disturbance. I want you to discharge him, I'm taking him some place safe."

The surgeon raised an eyebrow. "You may have a point about security, but I'm not comfortable discharging Mr. Fraser at the moment. Recovery from surgery is very tough on the body. Mr. Fraser needs rest. If I discharge him in your care, what guarantee do I have that he will get it?"

Ray glowered. "An armed man bust into _Constable_ Fraser's room, and he had to fight him off. What guarantee do I have that he'll get the rest he needs under _your_ care?"

The surgeon sighed. "I'd like to think that my personal guarantee was enough, but if the police can't keep intruders out, I can see why you would doubt that. Let me speak to Constable Fraser alone, please." She shooed Ray out of the room, closing the door. He watched through the glass in it.

The surgeon sat beside Benton's bed. She patted his hand gently, the lines of her face softened by deeply felt compassion. She could imagine with complete clarity how she'd feel if she saw either of her sons hurt the way her patient was, not by any accident, but a savage assault. She decided he could use the maternal touch. Of course, her sons could have told Benton that her version of the maternal touch would do a drill sergeant proud.

"Now, young man." she said. "I know you want to get out of here, so we need to have a little chat about taking care of yourself."

"Yes, ma'am." Benton said meekly. He would do anything to be out of the confinement of the hospital.

"I imagine, Constable Fraser. Er, do you mind if I call you Benton?"

Benton smiled. "Please do." he said. He liked the plain-spoken woman.

"I heard from the EMTs, Benton, that you managed to climb halfway up a hill and build yourself a shelter in spite of the condition in which they found you. I imagine that you are accustomed to applying a high level of discipline to overcome physical challenges to achieve an end."

Benton blushed under his bruising. It was true, but it sounded immodest. However, she had him pinned in piercing pale blue eyes and he couldn't avoid a direct answer.

"Yes, ma'am." he said.

"Right. Well, if I discharge you, I'm going to need you to apply that discipline. Because I'm going to need to know that you _will_ stay on bedrest for the next three days."

Benton tried to conceal his frustration. "Ma'am." he said, "My partner and I are engaged in a serious criminal investigation. I believe it is vital for the cause of justice that I-"

The surgeon shook her head with a small smile. "They say doctors think we're god! Do you really have the arrogance to think that if you're on bedrest for three days, no-one else will be able to carry the load for you?"

Benton had a glint in his eye. It might be arrogance, but he never backed down from a job that needed doing. The surgeon's eyes sparked with matching annoyance.

"Listen, Benton, if someone you knew was injured as badly as you have been, would you castigate them for not getting back up and doing their job? Or would you understand that they need recovery time?"

"That's different." Benton said, illogically.

"What makes you so special that you don't deserve the same basic kindness you'd show anybody else? Benton, you're human, subject to the frailty of the body. I'm sorry that it's been borne home to you by these violent acts, but you have to learn to be gentle to yourself. I will not discharge you unless you can promise me that you will take it easy."

Benton squirmed under her gaze. Reading the body language between Benton and the petite woman through the glass, Ray thought it looked like a wolf being cowed by a terrier.

"I promise." Benton said eventually.

"Good. Now, I'm going to make you promise one more thing, and then I'm going to give you some advice." The surgeon pulled out her prescription pad and wrote two prescriptions.

"One of these is for a narcotic pain reliever." She saw the way Benton wrinkled his nose. "Don't worry. I'm not going to make you promise to take those, although it would be the smart thing to do. The other one is for an non-steroidal pain reliever with anti-inflammatory properties to help the surgical incision and the deep bruising to heal."

She handed him that prescription. "I need you to promise me that you'll take the dose as described on the bottle, until the bottle runs out. Can you do that?"

Benton promised.

"Fine. Now, I would bet a year's salary that you're carrying around a voice in your head that tells you that showing pain is weakness, and taking anything to alleviate the pain is an especially contemptible sign of weakness. You've probably been feeling guilty about the morphine, even though it's necessary for your recovery. From the scars I saw when I operated, you've been in some very nasty situations in your life, and perhaps you don't like to make a fuss because you know things could be worse."

Benton looked down, not meeting her eyes.

"Let me tell you something, as someone who's got a lot of years of experience on you, Benton. Any bullshit", the crude word startled Benton, as incongruous as it was with her crisp, educated voice, "that anyone has fed you about real men sucking it up and ignoring pain is completely irrational. Pain is a signal that you need to listen to. If you ignore the pain, it will slow down your recovery. Your body is stressed by it, and will have to spend more resources on accommodating the pain than on repairing your injuries."

The surgeon's expression softened. "Remember, for someone who has spent their whole life soldiering on no matter how bad you feel, it takes strength to change, to overcome that prejudice. I know that lying around taking your medicine and not being macho will feel like giving in, but it's quite the opposite. It's letting your real needs take precedence over your pride, and that is no easy thing."

Benton's eyes searched the surgeon's face. She seemed to have seen right through him. He smiled, a tired but sincere smile.

"I'll remember that. I do tend to heal fast, ma'am, but I will rest, and I'll take the pills. And thank you, well, for taking the time to speak to me."

"Good grief. She might as well just tie a pinafore on you now." Robert Fraser's ghost chose this opportune moment to appear. Benton glared at him. The surgeon read this expression as a sign that he was overtired.

The surgeon smiled. She thought she had reached the young man, and she hoped her words would help ease the burden of his enforced leisure. "Just follow doctor's orders and you'll be fine." she said, slipping out of the room.

'What do you want now?" Benton said to his father's ghost as soon as the surgeon was gone. "Happy to have a captive audience?"

"I can't believe you gave her your word, son." Bob Fraser exclaimed.

"I had to. I need to get out of here. Besides, perhaps she's right, Dad." Benton said.

"Right? A Fraser taking a three day vacation in the middle of a case?" Bob Fraser hid his worry about the state of his son's health in those sharp words. He was alarmed that Benton was feeling poorly enough to even contemplate following the surgeon's orders.

Benton shook his head slightly. "This is exactly what she was talking about." he said.

"What who was talking about?" Ray said, as he pushed the door open. "I was talking to your spitfire of a surgeon. I guess you'll be clear to leave in a half hour. Sucks that you're on bedrest, but I do have a stack of files for you to go over."

Benton looked less than thrilled. "Three days. That isn't so bad, I suppose."

Author's Note: Good luck staying on bedrest for three days with bad guys roaming around. Mwahaha. I wish my villains weren't so stupid though. I knew I should have sent them to villain school.

I find I need to do a major rewrite on the next few chapters, argh, grr... but barring freak accidents it shouldn't delay updating for too long. And for those keeping score on how much this is distracting me from nanowrimo, I'm right on target there... just under 22,000 words. Phew.


	7. You're Feeling Very Sleepy

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

Chapter 7 - You're Feeling Very Sleepy

Fraser was quite embarrassed that the hospital insisted that he use a wheelchair to go from his room to the parking lot. He wasn't going to admit that putting on his t-shirt and sweatpants had exhausted him and he couldn't even reach his feet to put shoes and socks on. Daniel had to help, with a cheerful sleight of hand that minimized Fraser's self-consciousness. Officer McNeely wheeled him out to the parking lot while Ray brought the Rivera around.

As soon as the Rivera came to a halt and Ray opened the door, Diefenbaker surged out of the car and rushed over, tail wagging madly. Fraser got to his feet.

"Dief!" he said. The wolf was careful not to throw his human off balance, whining softly and gently nuzzling his head against Fraser's leg. "It's good to see you too, boy." Fraser said.

McNeely climbed into the back seat of the car and slid over to sit behind Ray. Diefenbaker stationed himself behind Fraser where he could lean over and lavish his face with not entirely unwelcome licks for a solid five minutes. Ray found this hilarious, but what made him happiest was seeing the brilliant smile come back to Fraser's bruised face, even while he pushed Diefenbaker's head away. It seemed that being released from the confines of the hospital suited him.

For most of the drive back in to the city, the Rivera was shadowed by a highway patrol car, in case of any further incidents - they had not found the pickup that had menaced Ray and McNeely earlier.

"So, we have the guy who attacked you in your room, though it's a cinch that he won't be talking." Ray said. "And we're trying to pick up Eric Thomas. We gotta be able to figure out who the payroll is for this."

"John Gantz was presumably on the payroll too, though I imagine that there was more to that, because he was willing to confess to a murder." Fraser mused. "We'll need to know what the crime scene investigators found at the scene of Gantz's murder, we need to know if he was killed by his associates or by De Angelis's men."

"They're working round the clock on it. With the threat of major gang violence, this case is a top priority." Ray said.

Fraser looked around at the streets they were driving through. "Ray, this isn't the way to my apartment." he said, suddenly alert.

Ray gave him an amused sideways glance. "Benny, if the hospital wasn't secure enough, what would make you think you'd be going back to the dump with no locks on the door? You're going to be staying at the consulate. I called Thatcher after you were done with the surgeon."

Fraser looked both irritated and alarmed, his jaw tensing while his eyes widened. "Firstly, I'd rather you not refer to my place of dwelling as a 'dump', Ray, and secondly, I simply cannot impose upon Inspector Thatcher's routine at the consulate for that long."

"Sorry, Benny." Ray said, correctly interpreting the meaning of the second objection. "I know it's going to drive you nuts, but prepare to be fussed over."

Three days on bed rest with Constable Turnbull waiting on him- Fraser considered that the prospect sounded almost more unpleasant than a night on the ice with a broken shoulder. But he'd given his word to the surgeon and he saw no way around it. Ray did not look amenable to persuasion, and if he was quite honest with himself, Fraser was unsure that he'd be able to do everything necessary to maintain his comfort and health, alone in his apartment. His independent spirit bucked at the idea of relying on others to cater to his needs, but pragmatism showed him the necessity thereof, at least until he regained some mobility.

Ray and McNeely saw Fraser safely into the consulate, helping him up the stairs to the guest bedroom, then left to question the man who had attacked Fraser in the hospital. Constable Turnbull was on hand to find a pair of pajamas (Fraser didn't care to ask why there was a pair of blue and white striped pajamas in his size in Turnbull's supply closet) and get him settled into bed.

It took less than an hour for Fraser to become frustrated. He appreciated even more the surgeon's insight in appealing to his sense of discipline, because it took all that he had not to declare himself fit for duty and march on out of the consulate. Turnbull had been in and out ten times during the hour, bringing tea, shortbread, fruit, cushions, soup for lunch, a hot water bottle, a book of crosswords, a bowl of water for Diefenbaker who was lying at the foot of the bed, and after fetching Fraser's prescriptions from a pharmacy, a tray with a little glass of water and a tiny paper cup that could only be described as 'frilly', containing a dose of each of the pills.

During the moments that he wasn't being interrupted with solicitous offerings, Fraser had been thinking, _certainly_ not brooding, but thinking that it would be a great help to the case if he could somehow recall the details of what had happened to him on the stairs and in the van, if he could put it together and find clues to the identities of the men who'd attacked him.

He had promised Ray that he wouldn't dwell on the horrific event, but he thought there was a way that he could break through to the memories without the attendant mental anguish. As Turnbull set the tray down on the bedside table and fidgeted about under the pretext of straightening up, but in reality to be close in case Fraser needed him, Fraser said, "Constable Turnbull, if you could bring me the tape recorder that's in my desk drawer, a notepad and a pencil, and an alarm clock, I'd be grateful." Turnbull was happy to have something more to do to be of use and hurried away.

Turnbull returned with the items, wearing a more puzzled than usual expression on his face. "Here you are, sir," he said. "And are you sure I can't fluff your pillows for you?"

"No, thank you. What I'd like you to do is stand outside of the door to this room for the next half hour and don't let anyone in. Can you do that for me?" Fraser asked.

"I'm not to let anyone in, including myself?" Turnbull clarified.

"That's right, if you please." Fraser said.

"You can count on me, sir!" The younger man wandered off looking determined.

Twenty minutes later, Inspector Thatcher emerged from her office with the intention of seeing how Fraser had settled in. She hadn't seen him since the first night at the hospital. She found Constable Turnbull standing outside of the guest bedroom door.

"Turnbull, what are you doing?" she asked brusquely.

"Ah." Turnbull leaned in toward her conspiratorially. "I'm keeping everyone out of Constable Fraser's room." he said.

"Well, you're not keeping me out." Thatcher said. "Stand aside."

"Oh, I'm afraid I can't do that." Turnbull replied. "Constable Fraser was quite clear that I'm to let no one in, including myself!"

Inspector Thatcher's eyes flashed. She could hear the sound of Fraser's voice and she wanted to know what was going on in that room.

"Constable Turnbull, do you comprehend that I outrank Constable Fraser and that I am ordering you to step aside?" she said sharply. Turnbull looked thoughtful for a good ten seconds longer than was strictly necessary before absorbing this information. "Oh." he said, "Um. Yes sir!" and stepped out of her way.

Thatcher opened the door and strode in. Benton was sitting upright in bed with the tape recorder in one hand. He didn't acknowledge her. She walked over to his bedside. He continued talking in a calm voice into the tape recorder.

"The bulb wired into the back of the van was a standard 40 watt incandescent bulb. The appearance of the wiring job was professional, with the cords tacked down neatly. There were two more men in the van, one a caucasian male, approximately six foot two inches in height, with no facial hair and brown eyes, wearing dark blue denim jeans, work boots, a brown sweater and a black leather jacket. On his right hand ring finger this man had a signet ring with an insignia in the shape of a triangle containing a five pointed star."

Thatcher waved her hands in front of Benton's open eyes. He still didn't respond. "Constable Fraser!" she said. He continued talking, describing the scene of his attack in detail. Thatcher sank down into the chair beside the bed as he began reciting dispassionately the specifics of the beating.

The alarm bell rang and Benton's eyes suddenly snapped into focus. He pressed the off button on the tape recorder. He seemed startled to see Thatcher in the room.

"Oh, Inspector Thatcher. I asked Turnbull to -never mind." His mind worked faster than Turnbull's, fortunately, and he could see what had happened. "I'm sorry, I was engaged in self-hypnosis for the process of recovering memories."

"That explains..." Thatcher trailed off. She did not look happy. Benton had not intended for anyone to hear what he'd recalled until he had a chance to listen to the tape recorder and collect the useful pieces of evidence, sifting them out from the extraneous painful memories that were too personal to share.

"How much did you hear?" he asked quietly, his eyes searching hers. The look on her face was hard for him to categorize, as adept as he was at reading people. There was a lot of that going on lately, both with Ray and Thatcher. If Benton could have known what they'd seen when they found him by the lake, he would have understood much more clearly the darkness hidden behind his superior officer's mask of command, and the flashes of pain that would appear in Ray's eyes sometimes when he was talking to Benton.

"It doesn't matter." Thatcher replied shortly. "But you have my word, Constable Fraser, we will find the men responsible and bring them to justice."

Benton smiled. "I have no doubt of that, sir. I appreciate your support."

Thatcher stood up abruptly. "Anyway, I'll be in my office if you need anything. But talk to me first before you pull any more stunts like this self-hypnosis. I need to know what's going on in my own consulate." With that, she turned and left the room.

Benton spent the next half hour playing back the tape and making pencil sketches of the men in the van and the insignia on the ring he'd noticed. He was just getting up to take them to the fax machine, having rationalized that walking that far did not count as exertion, when Turnbull knocked and entered the room.

"Ah, ah, ah! What are we up to?" he said in a sing-song voice. "I'll take those. You get back in bed." Benton complied with a dark look. When Turnbull continued with a mildly scolding "And we haven't taken our pills, have we?", Benton snapped.

"That will be quite enough, Constable Turnbull. Please fax those sketches to Detective Vecchio and leave me alone."

Benton saw the hurt look on the younger mountie's face and he knew he was being childish, but the man tried his patience on the best of days. He _had_ taken the anti-inflammatories. But now when he tried to close his eyes and rest, the aches and pains from his injuries were persistent, nagging at him and keeping him from sleep. Reluctantly, he gave in and took the stronger pain killer.

Turnbull came back in to check on Benton ten minutes later and found him asleep. Turnbull pulled the covers up and tucked him in. He would do anything to be of service to the man he looked up to, not only as a sort of older brother, but as the avatar of all that was good in the RCMP. He let his imagination, which was vivid although not entirely anchored in reality, roam, picturing the men who had hurt Benton covered in molasses and staked out on an ant hill. It was a pleasing vision.

Ray arrived in the evening to find Benton sitting up in the bed looking much refreshed by his rest, an open carton of milk on the side table and a bowl of jello and icecream, provided by the ever zealous Turnbull, on a tray in his lap.

Ray dropped down in the chair beside the bed, once more bearing a pile of files. "I thought I told you not to go brooding about what happened." he said. "But whatever you did, you turned up some gold."

Benton put the icecream on the table and sat up a little straighter. "Actually, Ray, I used a form of self-hypnosis to get the details."

Ray snorted with comic disbelief. "Self-hypnosis. While you were out did you tell yourself you were a chicken? Because I'd pay real money to see that."

"Now, don't be ridiculous, Ray. It's a perfectly normal technique."

Ray smirked. He was mostly teasing Benton because it was good to see the man rise to the challenge and argue back. "I suppose you learned it from a book in your grandma's library?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. I don't see what's so funny about that." Benton replied. He, too, had the merest hint of a twinkle in his eye. It felt good to banter with Ray, normal and reassuring. "So what did you find out?"

"Okay, well that insignia you saw on the ring belongs to a New York City family. Mafia. No one's got any record of them moving in locally, so that's real interesting, wouldn't you say?"

"I would say so. It confirms that we're looking for someone using Gantz to set the two local factions against each other."

"Yeah. Now, the guy we arrested at the hospital is one George Lewis. We still don't make either him or Eric Thomas as working for Mack or De Angelis. Which I guess makes sense if they're working with these New York guys. The two other guys you sent sketches of are spot on for some low level members of the New York gang. But real low on the totem pole. Not your made men or anything."

"I got the impression, Ray, from what I was able to remember, that Lewis and Thomas had a long association. They behaved as if they were familiar with each other, but the other two men, neither of whom were particularly talkative, seemed to be relative strangers to them, judging from the body language."

"Did you notice anything else that might link Lewis and Thomas?" Ray said.

"Well, it seemed clear from the state of their clothing and their hands that they are both manual laborers. Builders, I would guess. Both of them had tanned necks, so I assume they work outdoors. Thomas's file confirms this. I haven't seen Lewis's file, but if they don't work for the same company now, I would be willing to state that they've almost certainly worked for the same company in the past."

Ray smiled. "Conveniently enough, I brought Lewis's file."

The two men sat there and compared Thomas and Lewis's files until they found something useful.

"See this Benny?" Ray said. "About ten years ago, Lewis was working for the subsidiary of a major construction company, same company Thomas was working for at the time, on a big skyscraper project. I'll bet that's where they met each other. Now, I happen to know Mack and De Angelis also own big construction firms. I'll get Elaine to do some digging on it." He looked at his watch and screwed up his face. "In the morning, I guess. I'm sorry we didn't get further but still, better than nothing."

Benton smiled warmly. "It's a lot better than nothing, Ray. I know we're going to solve this."

Just then, Inspector Thatcher appeared at the door of the room. "Detective Vecchio, more than anyone I appreciate your zeal in focusing on this case, but Constable Fraser needs his rest." she said, in a slightly less stern than usual tone. Ray stood up and gave a half-assed salute. "Yes, ma'am." he said. To Benton he added, "I'll be back first thing tomorrow."

None of them had the slightest prescience of the nightmare the next day would bring.

Author's Note: In the season 3 episode "Seeing is Believing", Fraser hypnotizes Ray, Thatcher, Welsh and Francesca en masse, after mentioning that in the past he's used the technique on himself. So I thought, 'handy!' and borrowed it. Because I just couldn't bring myself to make him see the shrink.

Not so thrilled with this chapter, still struggling on the rewrites because things just weren't working! Please review and let me know what you think. I promise more excitement in chapter 8, and chapter 9. Eventually.


	8. Don't Get Mad, Get Judicial

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 8 - Don't Get Mad, Get Judicial**

Benton had a troubled night. His shoulder was bothering him, and every time he got in a position that was comfortable for it, his ribs would start off twinging. Turnbull had set up a cot in the corridor but Benton didn't want his sort of fussing. He just wanted to sleep, and when he couldn't, he turned on a lamp and spent the hours reading the files that Ray had left with him.

True to his word, Ray showed up bright and early the next morning, Officer McNeely and a half dozen glazed donuts in tow. He ordered McNeely to guard the front door. After what he'd put together digging through the records, he was concerned that the person who'd ordered Fraser's killing, and who'd masterminded Gracie De Angelis's death must now be getting panicky as his time was running out.

Ray slipped a strawberry glazed donut to Diefenbaker and sat beside his increasingly bored and restless looking partner, who was still, as ordered, stuck in bed.

"I'm not staying for long." Ray said. "It took Elaine a bit of digging on the computer but we hit the jackpot! We busted this one wide open." He bit into a donut, leaving Benton in agonized suspense.

"And?" Benton said as Ray chewed.

"Ten years ago, Thomas and Lewis were both working for that construction company on that skyscraper project. Well, looks like Gantz, working for Mack, was managing one of the other crews working on it, there were several companies involved over the span of the building for one reason or another."

Benton sat up a little straighter. "Who owned the major construction company that employed Thomas and Lewis?" he asked.

"That's where things get interesting, Benny. See, the operative word is 'owned'. The firm was owned by a Pierre Ward. But a few years ago he retired and he split the company up. Ask me who he sold the subsidiary that Thomas and Lewis worked for to."

Benton winced slightly at the horrible sentence construction before he asked, "To whom did Ward sell the subsidiary, Ray?"

"Get this - his own son. Didn't give it to him, made him get financing. The son is not such a genius businessman as his Dad and has nearly run it into the ground. Now, right now he's bidding against both Mack and De Angelis for a major lakeside development. One of the companies that financed Junior Ward's little venture sounded familiar to me. I made a couple of calls to the boys in New York. Guess who's backing Ward?"

Benton didn't have to guess. It fit together, the low level mob soldiers in the van, the attempt to fire up a gang war between his rivals for the building contract. "Well, that would explain why an otherwise legitimate businessman would risk murdering the sister of a powerful criminal. He may have felt that he had no other option to save his own life from his creditors."

He looked puzzled. "One thing I don't understand though, is why Thomas and Lewis would also risk being involved in the scheme. We know they worked with the younger Mr. Ward in the past, if I assume correctly that the younger Ward ran the subsidiary before the older Ward retired, but there must be more than loyalty from a building site. Neither of them have more than petty assaults and thefts on their criminal records."

"Yeah, Rocco Ward was in charge on that project, according to the records." Ray said. "I guess whatever hold he had over Thomas and Lewis must have been pretty strong for them not only to risk murder but try to kill a cop." His face was twisted into an ugly scowl at the thought.

"Perhaps they thought the crime would be considered less serious because I'm not-"

Ray just couldn't stand to hear Benton talk so calmly about the pre-meditated and violent attempt on his life. He stood up abruptly and walked over to the window. "God, Benny. They must have gone over to your building as soon as we released Gantz. Ward must have ordered it without a second thought. I'm gonna kill him."

"Ray, that's not necessary. I'd rather see justice done." Benton said quietly.

Ray shook his head. "Far as I'm concerned, the jerk is asking for it."

"He's not worth it, Ray."

Ray didn't reply. He was on the verge of getting angry again, furious because Benton didn't seem to care about what these men had done to him. Ray felt like he had to carry Benton's anger for him, and he needed to hear that Benton was not just okay with having been used as a convenient punching bag.

Benton could see Ray getting physically tense, his neck scrunching down and shoulders rising up, moving into fight-or-flight mode. "How can you do it, Benny, how can you just lie there and act like it doesn't matter what they did to you?"

"Ray." he said softly. "I'm not... It's not that I'm... well, there has to be a judicial system, and I have to allow it to deal with the men who assaulted me, even more so than with other criminals we've caught. I'm afraid, Ray. If I let myself feel... if I don't deal with them dispassionately, I don't doubt that I have a capacity for... well, I'm afraid I could become the very evil that I am supposed to be fighting." Ray could hear a plea for reassurance in his words.

Ray turned around. "Benny, you could never be a heartless bastard like the guy who ordered at least three hits to save his hide. You don't have that in you."

"I don't know what I have in me, Ray. I never learned to express negative emotions particularly well. You are making an erroneous assumption if you think I don't feel at least as strongly about these men as you do. It scares me."

Ray heard the slightest tremor in Benton's voice that shouldn't be there, that would normally never be there. Benton was usually nothing if not confident of what was right and wrong, and Ray felt suddenly bad for arguing with his friend while he was clearly still struggling with his own reaction to the violence done to him. The coldness of his words scared Ray, too. Whatever hurt lay under that calm surface did not need Ray trying to stir it up, trying to rouse his friend to seek vengeance.

Ray sighed. "I'm sorry, Benny. I shouldn't take it out on you. It's just seeing you lying on the ground like they found you scared me half to death. I have a hard time understanding how you can not want to mess up whoever did that to you. I guess I kind of want you to be mad at me, too, because I feel like I let you down, I let them get you, do that to you. If you would let me hurt them, it would be like I could fix what I screwed up."

"We discussed this at the hospital. It's not your fault, Ray. I never thought it was."

Ray shoved his hands deep in his pockets. He couldn't look at Benton right now, see the earnest look, not even of forgiveness, but of the deep conviction that he had nothing to forgive Ray for. It would take time, and his partner not stifling a gasp of distress every time he had to adjust his sitting position in the bed, before he'd stop feeling guilty about inadvertently throwing Benton to the wolves.

"I guess. I guess we should just figure out how to nail this Ward if he is the guy. Top priority is a clean bust, because if I can't break his head for you, I want to throw the book at him."

The ghost of a smile touched Benton's lips. "I appreciate that, Ray. What year was Ward working at the same site as Gantz while supervising Thomas and Lewis? Perhaps there's something revelatory in Thomas's criminal record or background that might clarify why Gantz especially would do what he did."

"Eighty-six." Ray said.

"There was an incident that year." Benton said. He had spent a lot of quality time with Thomas's record during the hours of the night when he was too restless to sleep. "A man went missing at the work site and Thomas was one of the people who was questioned about it, but nothing came of the investigation. We'll have to dig deeper."

"It's something to throw at Ward and Lewis. I'm going to go pick up Ward now, bring him in for questioning."

"That sounds like a good idea, Ray. Just be careful. I wish I could come with you." Benton didn't bother to hide his frustration.

"Yeah, I wish you could too." Ray said. "But it's probably better this way for now." He wasn't sure he wanted Benton coming face to face with the man who ordered his death.

Ray left, but Fraser did not lie idle. He called in Turnbull who brought him the phone, and phoned Elaine at the station. She was pleased to hear from him.

"Fraser! How are you? Ray said you're doing better."

"I'm doing quite well, thank you, Elaine. I hope it's not too much trouble, but if you could look through some computer records for me, I think it would be helpful. I know you already did a lot of searching for Ray, but-"

Elaine's reply was warm with just the hint of scolding. "Fraser, of course I'll look. Don't you know we're doing everything we can to get these guys?"

There was a minute hesitation before Fraser replied, touched by the warmth in Elaine's voice. "Thank you, Elaine. That means a lot to me. Now, we're looking at an incident that occurred in 1986 that may be the connection between Rocco Ward, who apparently masterminded Miss De Angelis's killing, and Eric Thomas, George Lewis, and John Gantz."

He heard the sound of Elaine's fingers on the keyboard, and then a pleased "Ooh."

Between Elaine's research skills and Fraser's intuitive suggestions they quickly discovered that the missing man in 1986 had worked with Thomas and Lewis under Gantz's management, but been extremely unpopular on the job site. When he'd gone missing, witnesses had said that Thomas, Lewis and Gantz had been overheard in a bar drinking and talking about how the missing man was going to get his comeuppance.

But after he went missing, the three men had been given rock solid alibis for the night that he disappeared by Rocco Ward, who claimed that they had been doing him a favor and doing some restoration work on his large house in the suburbs. It was several years before the man's body was found.

Elaine gave a sharp intake of breath as she scrolled through the file about the missing man. "They found that he died because his neck was broken, but several other bones had been broken too. It looks like-" she hesitated.

"He was beaten to death." Fraser supplied, calmly, to Elaine's relief. "If Ward gave false information that cleared those men of their involvement in that murder, he'd certainly have a hold on them that would have lasted this long."

"It seems like he's trying to set up his own little crime syndicate." Elaine said. "Since he failed so badly at the construction business. It was a mistake to get into that much debt to the New York boys though."

"Indeed. Of course I'm sure they'd rather manipulate him to get their foot into the Chicago area than allow him, as a potential rival, to groom an organization of criminals. It must have been particularly convenient to them that he had a hold over Gantz, who was supposedly loyal to Mack."

"Instant gang war. Which, by the way, one of Mack's lieutenants was executed yesterday, we assume by De Angelis. Ray has to bring in Ward soon and stop this before it gets out of hand." Elaine said.

"I still don't understand why Gantz would confess to Miss De Angelis's murder." Fraser said, "It'd be no worse to be implicated in an old murder than confess to a new one."

"I think I have a clue." Elaine said. He heard her digging through papers on her desk. "I have Gantz's autopsy report here to be filed. While he was definitely executed, pretty certainly by De Angelis's guys, he was already dying, apparently. Cancer."

"And he knew it?" Fraser asked, excited.

"The medical examiner seemed to think that the advanced state it was, he had to have known. He had surgical scars from treatment and all. Gantz had a wife and kids. Ward could have offered a nice payoff to them if Gantz took the fall."

"That makes sense." Fraser said. He tried to stifle a yawn but couldn't hide it entirely. The sleepless night was catching up with him. Elaine's tone of voice changed immediately.

"Fraser, you sound tired. I'm going to let you go." she sounded concerned.

Fraser didn't bother arguing. They'd put together enough information to wrap up the case once Ward and Thomas were picked up, and there was no point going on while he needed sleep.

"Thank you again, Elaine. We couldn't do this without you." he said warmly. Elaine told him to concentrate on feeling better, and they hung up.

Ray Vecchio was having a bad day. Ward was not at his home or his office, and Ray was worried. Ward must know they'd arrested Lewis, that his plans had completely crumbled. He turned the Rivera back toward the consulate. If Ward had already gone on the run, then putting an all points bulletin out on him as they had for Thomas would turn him up eventually. But there was another scenario. He might still be fixated on disposing of the man who could identify all the players in his failed scheme. That thought gave Ray the chills. Ward's taste for violence had been indirect so far, but if pushed to the edge, who knew what he might do?

Benton took his assortment of pills, accepting that he needed all of them right now to get comfortable enough to sleep, and soon he was out cold. He dreamed he was lying out on the ice again, only this time far from shore, in a glittering white world, the stars above clear against a velvety blue sky, the constellations in the familiar positions of his home latitudes. He felt a deep sense of peace. Diefenbaker ran up to him, leading a pack of ghostly wolves who circled around him and pressed against him, warming him and welcoming him into the pack. He could feel the softness of their fur quite distinctly even though it was a dream. They had about them an ancient air, appearing larger than Diefenbaker, with a quality of archetype, old legends, myths of the North clinging to them. They struck Benton as being like one of the visions he had experienced when he had spent time in the sweat lodge as a younger man.

He felt a strange sensation as his body seemed to transform, growing its own thick coat of sleek grey-white fur, his senses becoming heightened, vision changing and sense of smell amplified until it was like he could taste the air around him. He stood up on four strong legs, packmates dancing around him, barking. He understood, they were saying, 'come, run, hunt' and leaving the broken human body on the bed, he ran as a wolf through the landscape that seemed less a thing of the dream world than the spirit world, following scents and stopping to nip and wrestle playfully with the other wolves.

This, alas, was interrupted by the vision of Bob Fraser approaching on a dogsled. "Wake up!" his father yelled urgently. "Wake up! The men need you!" Benton didn't know how his father recognized him, but his was not to argue with dream logic. As he felt himself slipping back into the human world with its attendant pains, he could have sworn he saw the wolf pack surrounding Bob Fraser, howling in a not entirely friendly manner. Very odd. He opened his eyes, becoming aware of a commotion toward the front of the consulate. He sat upright suddenly, gasping sharply at the motion, as he heard a gun shot. So much for promises. He had no choice but to break his word to the surgeon.

Fraser came out of the guest room and looked down the stairs. He saw Officer McNeely lying in a pool of blood on the landing, his gun beside him where it had fallen from his hand. Constable Turnbull was standing next to McNeely, pressed against the wall, white as a sheet. There was scuffling from the entrance way below. He moved cautiously down the stairs toward the landing. A shaky, nervously high pitched voice called out. "I know you're in here, mountie. I have Vecchio."

Fraser reached the landing and as the front door of the consulate came into view he saw a smallish man with a pistol held to Ray's head, one arm around Ray's neck. Fraser put the sequence of events together - obviously the shot he had heard was the man, presumably Rocco Ward, shooting McNeely. Then the scuffling - Ray putting up a resistance. But now Ray was helpless to do more with the gun against his head.

Fraser raised his hands slightly. "Mr. Ward, I presume?" he said, his eyes cold and his voice steady. "I'm going to tend to the officer who you shot." It wasn't a request, it was a statement, as he knelt by McNeely and felt for a pulse. The man was still alive, the attacker's bullet had struck him low on the body, near his hip, and he was bleeding profusely, but he wasn't in imminent danger of death. Fraser looked up at Turnbull. "Constable Turnbull, I need you to take off your jacket and use it to put pressure on Officer McNeely's wound."

He hadn't turned his back on Ward, but he was dividing his attention, reasonably confident that if Ward had intended to shoot him or Ray immediately, he'd have done it by now. Using Turnbull's shaky obedience of his order as cover, Fraser palmed McNeely's gun, and when he stood up to face Ward, stepping in front of McNeely and Turnbull, he raised it.

"Now you see, Mr. Ward, if you shoot Detective Vecchio, I will be forced to shoot you. You are standing on Canadian soil, and I will not hesitate to use this gun."

**Author's Note: It's Thanksgiving here in the US, and I had the good fortune to celebrate it with my husband and a family friend. We had a sumptuous tofurkey dinner (don't laugh! It's delicious) and watched the second season of Slings & Arrows, which I will take over football any day. My husband seems unflustered by the suggestion that I'm on the verge of running away to stalk my secret Canadian boyfriend. I hope everyone else in the US had a safe and reasonably happy Thanksgiving. (And the rest of the world a marvelous Thursday/Friday!) I'm thankful for everyone who posts stories to ff . net and to my readers, and especially those who take the time to give me feedback, for giving me a safe and friendly place to stretch my artistic wings. You're all wonderful, and that's not just the chocolate and peanut butter pie speaking.**

**Oh yes, and sorry about the cliffhanger. I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way. Two more chapters to go! Exciting conclusion up next, then inevitable sappy epilogue. I just can't help it!**


	9. This Morning I Shot an Elephant

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 9 - This Morning I Shot an Elephant In My Pajamas**

Earlier that day

Ray's bad day kept getting worse. After failing to find Ward at home, he was driving back toward the consulate when he saw a car parked a couple of blocks away from it that matched the make and model of Ward's car. Slowing down, he radioed in to check the license plate. When it turned out it matched Ward's, he asked for backup to be sent to the consulate. Then he phoned the consulate, getting hold of Constable Turnbull, and had him call McNeely to the phone.

"Ward's in the area. Who all is in the consulate?" Ray asked.

"Just myself, Constable Turnbull and Constable Fraser." McNeely said. "Inspector Thatcher and her secretary are out on business."

"Listen, stay inside, and don't let anyone in until I arrive." Ray said urgently. He pulled up outside the consulate shortly afterwards. It was as he was knocking on the door that Ward stood up from behind a parked car and sprinted toward him, gun raised. Ray didn't have time to draw his weapon. Ward pressed the gun to his neck.

"Just open the door." he growled. Ray complied unhappily, annoyed at himself for being caught off-guard, and at McNeely for not having locked the front door of the building. As they stepped into the entry way, McNeely, who was coming down the stairs with Turnbull, saw Ward's gun and drew his weapon. Ward fired past Ray impulsively.

Ray struggled with Ward after the shot, vying to get control of the gun, but Ward was driven, desperate, stronger than he would normally be, and Ray found himself in a headlock. His heart was racing, worry for McNeely and fear of what Ward intended to do at the forefront of his emotions. He saw Fraser come down the stairs and kneel beside McNeely, and a part of him wanted to yell out for Fraser to run, to get out of there. Seeing Fraser instruct Turnbull to care for McNeely at least relieved his anxiety that the courageous young officer was dead.

"Now you see, Mr. Ward, if you shoot Detective Vecchio, I will be forced to shoot you. You are standing on Canadian soil, and I will not hesitate to use this gun." As Fraser raised McNeely's gun and voiced his threat, Ray thought he looked like some sort of dark angel of vengeance clad in flannel pajamas. Fraser's eyes were like nothing he'd seen, burning with an intensity that was frightening.

The anger that Fraser had been carefully suppressing bubbled up to the surface as he heard McNeely's piteous sounding whimpers and saw the tiny glints of fear in Ray's eyes as Ward's gun was pressed to his head. It was a chilling anger that lent him an unnatural steadiness of stance and aim. Ward was flustered by it, seeing the man whose inconsiderate refusal to die had foiled his schemes standing in front of him with the look of a killer on his face, from the taut set of his firm jawline to the dark brow, furrowed and thunderous.

"Place your weapon on the floor, slowly." Fraser said through clenched teeth. "I am arresting you for conspiracy to murder Gracie De Angelis, the attempted murder of Officer McNeely, false imprisonment, assault with a deadly weapon, and," he hesitated almost imperceptibly as he listed the brutal attempt on his own life, "soliciting a murder. I suggest you surrender immediately."

Ray rolled his eyes. If he'd been the one in Fraser's place he'd probably have taken the shot at Ward already. Forget letting him surrender! Of course, there was the little matter of Ward using Ray as a human shield. Ray swallowed hard, pushing his fear away. "Take the headshot." he said loudly. He knew Fraser could do it, if anyone could. Ward hissed "Shut up!" in Ray's ear, pressing the gun against his temple.

"I said, surrender immediately." Fraser said, implacable, unwavering.

Ward's eyes darted around. Surely this was a stand-off? What made the mountie think he had enough of an advantage that he could order Ward to surrender? Tightening his grip around Ray's neck, Ward swung the gun around to point directly at Fraser.

"What if I shoot you instead?" he said.

"I will still shoot you down. Even if you hit me, if I fire at the same time, which I will, you will die." Fraser said, calmly, as if he were discussing a simple physics problem, which in a way he was. He was supremely confident of his shooting skills, especially now, like this, when it really mattered. Even if Ward worked up the nerve to fire at him, Fraser would see the man stopped before he could hurt anyone else. Besides, Fraser could tell that Ward wasn't nearly as confident of his position as he was. That meant the man would be prone to making nervous mistakes.

"If you fire that weapon, you will not walk out of here alive. The only way out is to put your weapon down." Fraser concluded.

Ray could feel the pulse in Ward's arm racing against his throat. Ward was getting panicky. Ray hoped Fraser knew what he was doing.

Outside, a crowd of law enforcement was assembling. The backup that Ray had called for had arrived in time to hear the shot that hit McNeely being fired, and they in turn had radioed in calling for a tactical team. Police barriers had been set up, and Lieutenant Welsh had arrived on the scene looking grim and weary. The consulate was now under siege, those inside effectively Ward's hostages.

Inspector Thatcher arrived back at the consulate to find it barricaded by police cars. "What's going on here?" Inspector Thatcher demanded of Lieutenant Welsh, eyes flashing with spirit. "Can you explain why I can't enter my own consulate?"

Welsh gave an outline of the situation. Thatcher made as if to stride past the barriers. Welsh grabbed her shoulder. "Inspector Thatcher, I'm going to have to ask that you stay back here. There's a SWAT team on the way."

Thatcher scowled. "I can't do that." she said, "I have men in there. I need to get to them." She wrenched against his grip.

"In case you missed it, Inspector, I have men in there too." Welsh said gravely. "So I can sympathize with your feelings, but you're going to have to stay here. I will slap a pair of cuffs on you so fast it makes your head spin if you don't settle down. I will not have another hostage walking into the situation."

Thatcher was poised as if she might rebel and break free from Welsh's hold by force for a moment. Then her conscience pricked. "Margaret," she told herself in a firm inner voice. "If you have to choose between inclination and duty, do your duty!" Her inclination would have had her inside the consulate in a heartbeat. Her duty was to wait out here doing nothing until the SWAT team arrived.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," she said, with an apologetic smile. "You're quite right. I let my emotions get the better of me. There's no excuse for my outburst."

Welsh nodded. "It's understandable." he said gruffly. "I know how it feels to see one of your men badly hurt, and I know how worried you must be. Let's just hope that Vecchio and your Constable Fraser can pull off a miracle like they seem to be in the habit of doing."

Ward was becoming increasingly uncertain. It was one thing to order a killing, it was another to have to look someone in the eye and shoot them. He'd shot McNeely without thinking it through, he'd just reacted to the threat of the gun being drawn, and he knew he was lucky he'd managed to shoot first and hit the policeman at all. But the mountie was freaking him out, those eyes shaded with stark resolution piercing him, the lips that were curled in obvious disdain. He felt his hand shake, and he knew he wasn't going to be able to do it. His best chance was to run. He lifted his hand up and brought the gun down on the back of Ray's head. Ray went limp in his arms.

Ward pushed Ray away and ran past the stairs toward the back of the consulate. Fraser, adrenaline and anger making him forgetful of his general physical state, vaulted over the banister to land close behind Ward. The jump was fine. The landing was a painful reminder of the punishment his body had taken, the jarring shock rippling through him. He bit down hard on his bottom lip, holding back a cry as he stumbled to one knee then straightened up. Nothing mattered now but getting his man.

Ward turned, eyes wild. They were mere feet apart, each still holding a gun. Ward was a caged animal. He snarled "You should be dead!" his gun pointed at Fraser's chest.

"First, Gantz couldn't manage to confess to one stupid goddamn murder without screwing up and making you suspicious, and then I send four men to kill you and they can't even finish the job. And now I'm dead. I'm so dead. It was supposed to be so goddamn simple. The boys come in from New York and take out De Angelis's sister. Gantz takes the fall and De Angelis and Mack are at war. My backers are happy, I'm happy, who the hell cares about some stupid mob boss's sister? Who the hell would bother looking further than a guy who already confessed? You should be dead! You should be _dead_!"

Fraser could see that Ward's hand was trembling wildly, but at that range, if Ward fired, it would make no difference. No matter how bad Ward's aim was, the bullet would rip a fist sized hole through Fraser's torso. Unsurvivable, even with his track record of beating the odds. In his peripheral vision Fraser could see Ray moving. He was thankful that the blow to Ray's head obviously hadn't been very hard. Fraser moved sideways, Ward tracking his motion with the gun and moving with him. Fraser wanted to put Ward's back to Ray. He didn't want the criminal getting any ideas about finishing what he'd started with the Chicago policeman.

Only one thing was keeping Fraser from firing McNeely's gun and ending the standoff. He knew that no-one else would ever judge him for shooting in self defense, but he had to bring Ward in alive. His code of honor would allow no less, unless he had absolutely no alternative. If he shot Ward, he would know that he had chosen revenge over justice, no matter what anyone else thought.

Ray lay on the floor, his head pounding, watching the slow motion shoot-out as Fraser steered Ward around. "Go on, shoot him Benny." he muttered under his breath. "Shoot the bastard."

Ward was still rambling and cursing about how Fraser had ruined everything by living. He was working himself up to shooting Fraser down in cold blood, stepping in closer as Fraser moved around. Soon he was at point blank range. Ray held his breath and watched. Ward had his back to Ray now, and Ray rolled to his knees and pulled his gun from his holster silently, but there was no way he could shoot Ward and be sure of not hitting Fraser.

It was a mistake to get in so close to Fraser. As soon as Ward got within Fraser's reach, Fraser reacted, grappling Ward's gun hand. He quickly twisted Ward's wrist sideways and stepped inside Ward's reach so that Ward's gun was pointed past him at the empty hallway. Ward squeezed the trigger a split second too late. The shot flew just wide of Fraser to lodge safely in the floorboards.

Fraser followed through on his step in closer to Ward by dropping his shoulder, ramming it into Ward's chest in a move that would normally have taken his opponent down. Although the smaller man was thrown backward, Fraser's knees buckled under the sudden pain of impact as his shoulder struck the bulk of Ward's upper body, brightly colored lights filling his vision. Ward, held up by Fraser's grip on his arm, regained his balance and in turn reached out to grab Fraser's wrist and squeeze, trying to make him drop McNeely's gun. Fraser locked Ward's arm in the crook of his elbow, bringing himself close enough that he was almost eye to eye with the angry man. He found his feet and brought one knee up into Ward's groin.

Ward doubled over, but he was still clinging tightly to Fraser's wrist and he wasn't going to the floor without company. Ward saw where Fraser's weakness lay. As his head came down, he pulled back slightly and butted it hard into Fraser's broken shoulder, forcing him back against the side of the stairs with a crash. Fraser let out the air in his lungs with a low, agonized grunt, bracing himself to throw Ward off. Ray kept his gun trained on Ward, ready to fire the instant he saw a clear shot. Ward followed up on his successful move by stamping his shoe down forcefully on one of Fraser's bare feet. Ward was going for sheer quantity of pain to overcome Fraser's determination.

The tussle was cut short by a blur of fur and muscle and teeth appearing over the banister from the stairs. Diefenbaker's powerful spring from above brought Ward down, Fraser falling with him. The smaller man screamed in fear and rage as the wolf landed on his chest, growling threateningly.

As Ward went down, Ray stood up and moved in on him, keeping his gun trained on the would-be killer. He stepped on Ward's hand, forcing him to let go of his gun. Ray helped Fraser get to his feet, eyeing him with unconcealed worry. Reality was far better than the grim scenario he'd been picturing all the while that Ward held his gun on Benton, imagining his friend lying sprawled in a spreading pool of red on the floor while he stood by and watched, but reality still involved an unsatisfactory state of pallor and shortness of breath on Benton's part.

"I'm all right, Ray." Benton said in answer to the look of worry, although his voice lacked the steadiness to reinforce his words. Ray was relieved to see that Benton no longer looked as if he might be keeping a flaming sword of retribution up his pajama sleeve; gone was the dread expression, replaced with a normal, human look of warm concern for Ray.

"How's your head?" Benton put a hand out to touch Ray on the shoulder, looking into his eyes to check for signs and symptoms of concussion.

Ray rolled his eyes at the question, and at Benton's obvious scrutiny of his health. "Hurts. It's fine, though. I have a thick skull."

Ray returned his attention to Ward. "You heard what Constable Fraser said. You're under arrest." He knelt down and cuffed Ward, slamming the man against the floor roughly when he tried to get up. "Don't even think about it." Ray started reading Ward his Miranda rights. He would have liked to kick Ward a time or two, give him a taste of his own medicine, but he owed Benton a clean bust. There must be nothing that Ward could use to wriggle out of the deep trouble he was in.

The intensity of focus that had been keeping Benton moving vanished along with the threat from Ward. He found himself staring at the gun in his hand, knowing that he had been split seconds away from firing it. He became aware of the sound of Turnbull talking in jerky tones to McNeely, trying to comfort the wounded officer and assure him that help was coming. Benton leaned on the stair banister and walked to the foot of the stairs, then, with some effort climbed to the landing. Diefenbaker stood beside Ward, teeth still showing in case the would-be killer got any smart ideas about trying to escape. Ray followed behind Benton quickly, taking one moment to feel McNeely's weakening pulse before running back down the stairs to the front door of the consulate.

Ray flung the door open, putting his hands up in the air as he walked out to make it clear that he was not an armed miscreant. He was relieved to see the police cars and that surrounded the consulate, and most of all, an ambulance. Lieutenant Welsh and Inspector Thatcher ran over. They had been in a state of heightened panic ever since the second gun shot sounded from within.

"The intruder's down and cuffed." Ray said. "Crisis is over. McNeely needs medical attention _now_."

Inspector Thatcher strode into her consulate behind the EMTs, ready to take charge. McNeely was being stretchered out, and Detective Vecchio, for the second time in a week, was following behind an unconscious colleague, all the while being pestered by a paramedic who wanted to treat the bump on the back of his head. She spared him a brief, pitying glance. She had men of her own to take care of. Turnbull's hands and tunic were covered with McNeely's blood, and the young man was shivering, clearly unable to snap right back from the horror of trying to keep McNeely from bleeding to death on the floor in front of him.

The stairs and the entryway smelled of McNeely's blood, and the landing was slick with it. Thatcher made a mental note to have Ovitz sort out cleaners.

Fraser was still standing on the stairs, his face an affectless mask. His tightly controlled stance told Thatcher all she needed to know about what he deliberately wasn't allowing to show. The shallow way he breathed and his carefully correct posture betrayed him. Every now and then a deep tremor would sweep through his body and she could see him blink and tense his jaw and suppress it. Her eyes softened momentarily before she steeled herself again to the cold role of command.

Fraser himself had mixed feelings. On the one hand, he had done a wonderful job of setting back his recovery with his gymnastic stunt and the subsequent brawl. On the other hand, he'd apprehended the man responsible for Gracie De Angelis's death and the attempt on his own life, and he'd done it without betraying his principles. He felt at peace for the first time since the beating. Could he begrudge more physical pain to achieve that? Everything had a cost, and it had been a sure bet from the start that anything that started with as much violence as Ward's choices had unleashed was not going to end peacefully. Back to the first hand, he could really use a chair about now.

"Constable Fraser!" Thatcher snapped. "I distinctly recall being informed that you promised to stay on bedrest. I want to see you back in that bed, now. That's an order! Constable Turnbull! Wash your hands and take off that tunic. Then make sure that Constable Fraser gets into bed, and see that he stays there. Since Constable Fraser seems to think that he can just disobey doctor's orders willy-nilly, I'm holding you personally responsible to make sure he spends the next three days flat on his back."

"Yes, sir." two strained voices said in unison. There, that'd keep Turnbull occupied and give him something positive to focus on, fussing over Fraser, and Fraser would most certainly rest knowing that Turnbull would get in trouble if he didn't. Fraser looked like he was about to fall over, and this would spare his pride as well as get him off his feet. Otherwise he was liable to think it was his duty to go down to the station and see Ward booked in. She smiled to herself. Sometimes the dragon lady act was for their own good.

**Author's Note: We're winding down now. One more (sappy) chapter to wrap up the loose ends. I had to install an entire new browser to get this to post because firefox decided it hates the new login system, so _please_ review and let me know what worked for you and/or what didn't. The chapters with action are harder for me to polish to my satisfaction than the more quiet, talky ones! (I'm taking a nifty self defense class right now though, that should help with staging fights. Every time the teacher demonstrates something really cool I file it away in my bag of writing tricks.)**

**On a personal note, I hit 50,000 words on my NaNoWriMo project today, although I still have plenty left to write to wrap that one up. It's been great having this story to revise when I needed a break from pounding out the 'novel'.**


	10. Epilogue

Disclaimer - Don't own / Don't make money / Would settle for a chorus of serenading Mounties.

**Chapter 10 - Epilogue**

After the noise and bustle was over there was a tense wait for news, punctuated by a rare house-call by the surgeon's assistant, who Thatcher called and personally pleaded with to come by and make sure that Fraser hadn't done too much new damage to himself. The surgeon's assistant had been less than impressed by the account of Fraser's inability to stay out of trouble, but initial examination suggested that the fight had not caused complications to the healing of Fraser's shoulder and ribs, although he would have to submit to fresh x-rays as soon as an appointment was available.

Late in the evening Ray called with the news that McNeely was stable, and spoke to Inspector Thatcher.

"Yeah, the doc says he lost a lot of blood but they stopped all the bleeding and he's doing fine. Poor kid." Ray said. He hesitated. He'd done his duty when he went with McNeely, but he'd wanted to stay and make sure that Benton was all right, physically and mentally. "So, how's Benny?" he asked, his voice artificially casual. Thatcher smiled into the phone. No doubt her relationship with Detective Vecchio would soon return to its equilibrium of barely veiled hostility, but they had a bond for the moment.

"Constable Fraser is going to be fine. He's blessed with quite the constitution, apparently. He could stand less excitement, but since the man responsible for the attempt on his life has been captured, l hope there will be no more further impediments to his recovery."

Underlying her words was an unspoken message that Ray returned with his vehement, "Me, too." It was amazing how mere tone of voice over a telephone line could convey "The man responsible for the attempt on his life _who I would pay good money to be alone in a room with for long enough to inflict some serious damage._" but that was precisely what Ray heard, and he echoed the sentiment heartily.

It was perhaps for the best that Welsh had handed Ward over to Federal organized crime investigators. Ward was going down hard. For his crimes he faced a life sentence under American law, and Thatcher was looking into charges arising from his activities inside the consulate, though there was a strong chance that he'd be executed by either De Angelis's crew or the New York gang before he could serve any time anywhere. His best chance was to turn state's evidence against the New York family and hope that the Feds could protect him.

The next day, Ray was able to convince Thatcher that bundling Benton into the car to visit McNeely, which Benton was anxious to do, did not constitute exertion. Benton had no great desire to return to a hospital, but he needed to see with his own eyes that McNeely was all right. There'd been too much senseless violence and he was feeling bruised of spirit, not just physically. On the drive over, Ray shared some interesting news.

"So they got Thomas." he said, with a grin. "In fact, he's in the hospital."

Benton's eyes widened. "How, Ray?"

"Seems like he was headed up to Canada in a stolen vehicle when he drove off a bridge. Broke both arms and a leg. The story is that he was raving about seeing a dead mountie on the road. Must be his conscience."

Benton's brow furrowed. He had an idea that it wasn't Thomas's conscience that sent him careening off the bridge.

Ray was still talking. "So you must be pretty happy, huh? Got what was coming to him."

Benton said, "Well, Ray, you know I was only looking for justice to be done, if the man had an unfortunate accident, that's not really something that it's appropriate for me to find gratifying."

Ray frowned. "C'mon Benny, you have to admit that it feels pretty good to hear that the monster that went after you with a baseball bat is in a body cast."

"I don't have to admit any such thing. It wouldn't be right!" Benton rebutted.

"Jeez, you gotta be so morally righteous about everything?" Ray sounded annoyed. "Just admit it, any human being would be happy to hear that."

Benton rolled his eyes at his partner's persistence. "Well, I do concede that I feel a certain measure of _schadenfreude_ at the situation." he said, his soft accent giving the foreign word a lilting quality.

"Schadenwhatnow?" Ray said.

"It means shameful joy, in German, taking pleasure at another's misfortunes." Benton clarified.

"Why couldn't you just say that in plain English then?" Ray snapped.

"It's simply more elegant in the original. German's a fascinating language, Ray. Much as the Inuit are known for their many ways of describing inclement weather, the German language is known for its compound words, single words that combine complicated concepts. Some of these are practical, such as_ rheindampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsstellvertreter_, which refers to the Captain of a steamship on the Rhine, and some are more poetic and evocative in nature, such as _weltschmerz_, which refers to a sensation of weariness with the pains of the world."

Ray stared at Benton with his mouth open. That was a fine bundle of abstruse and irrelevant explanation even for his partner. Then he burst out laughing, to Benton's astonishment. "Did I say something funny?" he asked, looking bewildered.

"Nah, Benny." Ray said, with a smile that warmed his whole expression. "It's just, you know, it's good to have you back. I hope you're around to irritate the hell out of me for a long time."

Benton gave him a long, measuring look, eyes narrowed, taking in the unstated but profound emotion on Ray's face before replying. He'd learned long ago that it wasn't always what Ray _said_ that counted most. Ray spoke hotly and hastily, and far more flippantly than Benton had ever managed. He was beginning to understand that Ray's glibness was as often a cover for his feelings as Benton's deep reserve was for his. But you could always trust Ray's actions to show the truth of what he felt, and he had more than proven himself a true friend. With a soft sigh that mixed regret over their past misunderstandings with gratitude for Ray's constancy, Benton replied, "I never wanted to walk away, Ray."

Two days later, Benton was officially off bedrest, although still on medical leave until he passed a physical and psychological screening. He had been grudgingly allowed by Thatcher and Ray, over their vocal protests, to return to his own apartment. He had no sooner watched Ray drive away than he laced his sturdy hiking boots on, and slipped into his favorite sweater that he hadn't quite outgrown from his younger years. It had always been much too big, and now the ribbing at the neck was half frayed out and the cuffs were unravelling, but he loved it for the way it made him feel closer to home. Topped off with his hat, he felt like he was properly dressed again for the first time in over a week. He relished the chance of freedom from being stuck in stuffy, overheated rooms, relegated to lying around while people waited on him.

"We're going for a walk." Benton said, leaning down so that Diefenbaker could read his lips. "Yes, outside." The wolf was dancing in joyful circles around him, clearly equally done with the cabin fever days.

The air was cold and sharp and it felt good against Benton's skin. So, it was laced with diesel fumes, so he couldn't escape the noise of traffic, but there was still some peace to be had, even in the middle of a crowd. Diefenbaker had territory to reassert his presence in, and was sniffing and greeting old friends as they walked through the neighborhood. Benton was surprised by the number of people who stopped to talk to him, wondering where he'd been and expressing concern about his pale, bruised appearance.

Perhaps they hadn't been willing to be involved when there was danger afoot, but Benton was moved by how many people noticed that he hadn't been around and worried for him. An outside observer would have realized that these people were the ones on the margins of society, people struggling to make ends meet, the homeless and ragged, the hard working street vendors, each of them someone who had been touched by his generosity and willingness to help out, but that sort of distinction never occurred to him.

Benton was still in need of rather more rest than usual. When he returned from his walk, he stretched out in his long underwear on the bed for a nap, with Diefenbaker curled beside him. In spite of Ray's fervent promises to himself the night of Benton's abduction, Ray had been unable to persuade Benton to allow him to install any extra security devices. Benton was a man who stood firm in his resolve not to bow his head to fear.

No sooner had he closed his eyes than he found himself standing on an icy plain, one whose features he recognized from the dream the day that Ward had shot McNeely. This was where he'd been with the wolf pack. He stretched out, feeling fit and strong and whole. He took a deep breath of the frigid air. In the distance there was a figure. He strode toward it and as it came into focus, he saw it was his father, huddled over a hole in the ice, fishing.

"'Bout time you got here." Bob Fraser said.

"Is this a dream?"

"I don't know, son." Bob replied. "I'm pretty sure I'm here, but I'm also pretty sure you're asleep. I stopped asking that sort of question some time after I died. It's not relevant. What matters is that we're here."

"What are you doing here anyway, Dad?" Benton asked.

"Waiting for you. And fishing. Figured if I was waiting, I might as well." Bob Fraser pulled a muscular, writhing fish out of the ice hole.

"All right, what am I doing here?"

"You'll have to ask your friends that." Bob Fraser grumbled. Benton looked up and saw the wolf pack that had run in his dream before. They were moving across the ice from a stand of trees. He smiled. He could see Diefenbaker running among them, and he could feel the upswelling of joy he'd felt with them. The wolves came in close and formed a circle around Benton and Bob Fraser. The largest wolf sat alert, fixing Bob with a yellow-eyed stare.

It was interesting, Benton thought. He knew his place in this spirit pack was essentially as a cub. Wolves have a strong hierarchy and he was cosseted and bossed around with equal fervor by the more senior wolves. What was interesting was that it appeared very much the case that his father was also submissive to the elder wolves of this pack. Bob Fraser looked at the ice with a disgruntled expression.

"Fine, fine. I, ah. Son, I may have been too hard on you the other night, about the Yank. Maybe that wasn't the best time for me to be, uh, offering criticism."

Light dawned for Benton. He remembered being at his lowest ebb, his will to go on living draining away in the cold night air, and his father's stinging words about Ray and needing to learn to take care of himself. He remembered the warning snarl Diefenbaker had given. Evidently Diefenbaker had not chosen to let the matter drop. Benton was secretly very pleased. Dief could be difficult and obstinate, and he took a 'you're not the boss of me' attitude toward commands Benton gave, but it appeared that at least sometimes he had Benton's best interests at heart.

"Anyway, son. I don't want to make a meal of it, but maybe I was, hrrmph." Bob didn't do apologies.

"Would it be so difficult just to say you're glad I'm alive, and nothing more?" Benton asked.

"Of course I'm glad. Didn't think I needed to say that. Besides," Bob Fraser added, conscious that he may be on the verge of spoiling his son with effusive praise, "you spent thirteen years tracking men in the territories. I never had any doubt you'd make it through one southern night."

Benton was moderately staggered by what appeared to be a compliment on his survival skills. "...Thanks, Dad." he said. "By the way, you wouldn't happen to know anything about a dead mountie that Eric Thomas drove off the road to avoid hitting, would you?" It seemed as good a time to ask as any.

Bob Fraser grinned disconcertingly. "Well, son, since you were just lazing about, someone had to stop him from escaping. It's not my fault he panicked and drove off a bridge. Besides, I kept him company during the night until someone drove past and called an ambulance."

That certainly explained why Thomas had been a gibbering wreck prepared to confess to everything and name names by the time the police had arrested him in the hospital, Benton thought. He locked eyes with his father, seeing an innocence that was frankly too good to be true. He had a hard time believing that Bob Fraser didn't know that his haunting would cause Thomas to crash. Benton wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"Oh, don't get your britches in a twist, son. He's going to get his day in court." Bob Fraser said, "Think of it as a bit of poetic justice along the way. Anyway. I'm just happy that you're safe now." he concluded gruffly.

Benton's face relaxed into the glimmer of a smile. The big alpha male met his eyes and Benton nodded. The wolf gave him an inscrutable look that encompassed a shrugging "... if you're satisfied." And then Benton felt one of the cubs tugging at his sleeve, and he laughed freely, a clear, ringing laugh, happy to rejoin the pack at play. It was the best medicine he could imagine.

Bob Fraser watched with a warmth that he'd never admit to a soul. The wolf patriarch was still sitting beside him. "It doesn't matter how old he gets, I still see that tiny child with bright eyes and dark hair tucked up in his baby bag. I might not have been the best father, but I couldn't let someone hurt my boy like that and get away with it. How could a man see his son..." he swallowed hard, not getting the words out, "how could I call myself a man if I didn't do something about it?"

The wolf patriarch howled his approval. Humans were uncivilized at best. The young one, at least he had the common sense to get himself adopted by a wolf, even if he was otherwise prone to rash and dangerous activities. The older one was stubborn, and also dead, which some people might see as an impediment to personal growth, but it didn't really matter in the spirit world the wolf inhabited. With a little work, maybe he could be taught how to care for his cub.

Author's Note: And we're out! I hope you enjoyed reading along as much as I enjoyed writing this one. It proved an excellent distraction! Thank you for reading, and especial thanks to those who took the time to leave reviews! I may not be able to resist the lure of writing a sappy holiday story, but in case I do resist, happy and safe holidays to everyone!


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